Thomas C. Schelling and the Computer: Some Notes on Schelling's Essay "On Letting a Computer Help with the Work"

Today the Schelling model is a standard component in introductory courses to agent-based modelling and simulation. When Schelling presented his model in the years between 1969 and 1978, his own analysis was based on manual table top exercises. Even more, Schelling explicitly warned against using computers for the analysis of his model. That is puzzling. A resolution to that puzzle can be found in an essay that Schelling wrote as teaching material for his students. That essay is now published by Schelling in JASSS, exactly 40 years after it was written. In his essay, Schelling gives a guided tour of a computer implementation of his model he himself implemented, de-spite his warnings. On this tour, though more in passing, Schelling gives hints to an extremely generalised version of his model. My article explains why we find the gen-eralised version of Schelling's model on the tour through his computer program rather than in his published articles.