You're reading: Posts Tagged: network theory

Redrawing the map of Great Britain from a network of human interactions

By . Posted

This is just about the most right-on, 21st-century paper and associated PR I’ve seen this year. MIT’s SENSEable City Lab has produced this little video to go with a paper by some of their researchers, led by Carlo Ratti:

So we have a slickly produced YouTube video announcing an open-access paper about big data with a trendy creative commons 8-bit music track behind it. I don’t know whether to applaud them on a job well done or to have an adverse reaction against that much political correctness and PR budget in one place.

[Continue reading…]

“Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks” – 10 years on

By . Posted

ScienceWatch has published an interview with Duncan Watts and Steve Strogatz on the decennial of the publication of their paper “Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks”, which contained some counter-intuitive results about the spread of disease and sparked the development of network theory.

The interview covers what they did, what it means and what they hope will happen in the future. It’s quite interesting.

Interview: Duncan Watts & Steve Strogatz on ScienceWatch

Paper: Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks (£22 to the unwashed)

The True Importance of Friends

By . Posted

A new post is available over at Second-Rate Minds by Samuel Hansen.

Why your friends have more friends than you do. That is the rather provocative title of a 1991 paper by Purdue University sociologist Scott Feld. While the title is rather provocative, thankfully it turns out that the statement is built on a solid foundation. It turns out that your friends having …

Read the full post: “The True Importance of Friends“