The key to understanding the formation and physiology of cities

Amazing–the future of education!

I think this is amazing. I learnt how to solve for Eigen values/vectors from this guy way back on youtube. check out: http://www.khanacademy.org/

Here is what it is all about:

Structure and tie strengths in a mobile communication network

Click here for a lecture that presents empirical support of Granovetter’s seminal 1973 paper on the importance of weak ties in social networks.

In short, Prof. Jari Saramaki shows using mobile communication networks that weak ties are critical for the gluing together of social networks on a large scale, while strong ties give rise to local clusters of closely tied together friendship groups.  These findings are interesting because they support the two hypothesis put forth Granovetter: (1) that there is a transitivity of strong friendship ties, i.e. if A knows B, and B knows C, then there the probability that A knows C is increasing in the strength of the tie between A and B, and (2) that removing a weak tie has a greater impact on the shortest path of the network than has the removal of a strong tie.  For more, see lecture: here.

Algorithmic Approach to Strategic Network Formation

The rather neat thing about the area of strategic network formation is that it attracts the attention of economists, physicists, computer scientists and sociologists alike.  Here is a video I recently watched where intermediation benefits are explored in a strategic network formation setting.

I’m Back Posting!

Due to exams… I’ve not been posting much here for quite some time.  *Apologies*.  But now I’m moving into a my dissertation period, and as such I hope to ease into regular postings again.  Most likely the posts will relate to the reading and work I’m doing right now.

Putting things in perspective: