This class provides an introduction to modeling people and social systems. We learn to construct, manipulate, and evaluate models of people who vote, work, commit crimes, and attend classes. We cover concepts and ideas from game theory, learning theory, complexity theory, and even biology and physics (at a metaphorical level of course.) Though the topics and techniques covered are wide ranging — we analyze among other things the wisdom of crowds, the spread of ideas, the causes of racial segregation, and the emergence of riots, they aggregate into a deep methodological coherence. The kind of understanding you won't get by reading the newspaper. By the end, students will understand the strengths and uses of various modeling approaches used in the social sciences and be able to use them. This is not a mathematics course, but it does require a willingness to think abstractly, to carefully contemplate lots of charts and figures, and to do a little algebra. And above all, a commitment to never reading the newspaper in class.