Kinetic exchange models: From molecular physics to social science

We discuss several multi-agent models that have their origin in the kinetic exchange theory of statistical mechanics and have been recently applied to a variety of problems in the social sciences. This class of models can be easily adapted for simulations in areas other than physics, such as the modeling of income and wealth distributions in economics and opinion dynamics in sociology.
Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, REVTeX format. Tutorial article to appear in the American Journal of Physics. Revised figures, corrected and added references