Complex Contagion Features without Social Reinforcement in a Model of Social Information Flow.

Contagion models are a primary lens through which we understand the spread of information over social networks. However, simple contagion models cannot reproduce the complex features observed in real-world data, leading to research on more complicated complex contagion models. A noted feature of complex contagion is social reinforcement that individuals require multiple exposures to information before they begin to spread it themselves. Here we show that the quoter model, a model of the social flow of written information over a network, displays features of complex contagion, including the weakness of long ties and that increased density inhibits rather than promotes information flow. Interestingly, the quoter model exhibits these features despite having no explicit social reinforcement mechanism, unlike complex contagion models. Our results highlight the need to complement contagion models with an information-theoretic view of information spreading to better understand how network properties affect information flow and what are the most necessary ingredients when modeling social behavior.

Human language reveals a universal positivity bias.

Using human evaluation of 100,000 words spread across 24 corpora in 10 languages diverse in origin and culture, we present evidence of a deep imprint of human sociality in language, observing that (i) the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, (ii) the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation, and (iii) this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word use. Alongside these general regularities, we describe interlanguage variations in the emotional spectrum of languages that allow us to rank corpora. We also show how our word evaluations can be used to construct physical-like instruments for both real-time and offline measurement of the emotional content of large-scale texts.

The quoter model: A paradigmatic model of the social flow of written information.

We propose a model for the social flow of information in the form of text data, which simulates the posting and sharing of short social media posts. Nodes in a graph representing a social network take turns generating words, leading to a symbolic time series associated with each node. Information propagates over the graph via a quoting mechanism, where nodes randomly copy short segments of text from each other. We characterize information flows from these text via information-theoretic estimators, and we derive analytic relationships between model parameters and the values of these estimators. We explore and validate the model with simulations on small network motifs and larger random graphs. Tractable models such as ours that generate symbolic data while controlling the information flow allow us to test and compare measures of information flow applicable to real social media data. In particular, by choosing different network structures, we can develop test scenarios to determine whether or not measures of information flow can distinguish between true and spurious interactions, and how topological network properties relate to information flow.

Link communities reveal multiscale complexity in networks.

Networks have become a key approach to understanding systems of interacting objects, unifying the study of diverse phenomena including biological organisms and human society. One crucial step when studying the structure and dynamics of networks is to identify communities: groups of related nodes that correspond to functional subunits such as protein complexes or social spheres. Communities in networks often overlap such that nodes simultaneously belong to several groups. Meanwhile, many networks are known to possess hierarchical organization, where communities are recursively grouped into a hierarchical structure. However, the fact that many real networks have communities with pervasive overlap, where each and every node belongs to more than one group, has the consequence that a global hierarchy of nodes cannot capture the relationships between overlapping groups. Here we reinvent communities as groups of links rather than nodes and show that this unorthodox approach successfully reconciles the antagonistic organizing principles of overlapping communities and hierarchy. In contrast to the existing literature, which has entirely focused on grouping nodes, link communities naturally incorporate overlap while revealing hierarchical organization. We find relevant link communities in many networks, including major biological networks such as protein-protein interaction and metabolic networks, and show that a large social network contains hierarchically organized community structures spanning inner-city to regional scales while maintaining pervasive overlap. Our results imply that link communities are fundamental building blocks that reveal overlap and hierarchical organization in networks to be two aspects of the same phenomenon.

The sociospatial factors of death: Analyzing effects of geospatially-distributed variables in a Bayesian mortality model for Hong Kong.

Human mortality is in part a function of multiple socioeconomic factors that differ both spatially and temporally. Adjusting for other covariates, the human lifespan is positively associated with household wealth. However, the extent to which mortality in a geographical region is a function of socioeconomic factors in both that region and its neighbors is unclear. There is also little information on the temporal components of this relationship. Using the districts of Hong Kong over multiple census years as a case study, we demonstrate that there are differences in how wealth indicator variables are associated with longevity in (a) areas that are affluent but neighbored by socially deprived districts versus (b) wealthy areas surrounded by similarly wealthy districts. We also show that the inclusion of spatially-distributed variables reduces uncertainty in mortality rate predictions in each census year when compared with a baseline model. Our results suggest that geographic mortality models should incorporate nonlocal information (e.g., spatial neighbors) to lower the variance of their mortality estimates, and point to a more in-depth analysis of sociospatial spillover effects on mortality rates.

Democratizing AI: non-expert design of prediction tasks.

Non-experts have long made important contributions to machine learning (ML) by contributing training data, and recent work has shown that non-experts can also help with feature engineering by suggesting novel predictive features. However, non-experts have only contributed features to prediction tasks already posed by experienced ML practitioners. Here we study how non-experts can design prediction tasks themselves, what types of tasks non-experts will design, and whether predictive models can be automatically trained on data sourced for their tasks. We use a crowdsourcing platform where non-experts design predictive tasks that are then categorized and ranked by the crowd. Crowdsourced data are collected for top-ranked tasks and predictive models are then trained and evaluated automatically using those data. We show that individuals without ML experience can collectively construct useful datasets and that predictive models can be learned on these datasets, but challenges remain. The prediction tasks designed by non-experts covered a broad range of domains, from politics and current events to health behavior, demographics, and more. Proper instructions are crucial for non-experts, so we also conducted a randomized trial to understand how different instructions may influence the types of prediction tasks being proposed. In general, understanding better how non-experts can contribute to ML can further leverage advances in Automatic machine learning and has important implications as ML continues to drive workplace automation.

Efficient crowdsourcing of crowd-generated microtasks.

Allowing members of the crowd to propose novel microtasks for one another is an effective way to combine the efficiencies of traditional microtask work with the inventiveness and hypothesis generation potential of human workers. However, microtask proposal leads to a growing set of tasks that may overwhelm limited crowdsourcer resources. Crowdsourcers can employ methods to utilize their resources efficiently, but algorithmic approaches to efficient crowdsourcing generally require a fixed task set of known size. In this paper, we introduce cost forecasting as a means for a crowdsourcer to use efficient crowdsourcing algorithms with a growing set of microtasks. Cost forecasting allows the crowdsourcer to decide between eliciting new tasks from the crowd or receiving responses to existing tasks based on whether or not new tasks will cost less to complete than existing tasks, efficiently balancing resources as crowdsourcing occurs. Experiments with real and synthetic crowdsourcing data show that cost forecasting leads to improved accuracy. Accuracy and efficiency gains for crowd-generated microtasks hold the promise to further leverage the creativity and wisdom of the crowd, with applications such as generating more informative and diverse training data for machine learning applications and improving the performance of user-generated content and question-answering platforms.

Creativity in temporal social networks: how divergent thinking is impacted by one's choice of peers.

Creativity is viewed as one of the most important skills in the context of future-of-work. In this paper, we explore how the dynamic (self-organizing) nature of social networks impacts the fostering of creative ideas. We run six trials (N = 288) of a web-based experiment involving divergent ideation tasks. We find that network connections gradually adapt to individual creative performances, as the participants predominantly seek to follow high-performing peers for creative inspirations. We unearth both opportunities and bottlenecks afforded by such self-organization. While exposure to high-performing peers is associated with better creative performances of the followers, we see a counter-effect that choosing to follow the same peers introduces semantic similarities in the followers' ideas. We formulate an agent-based simulation model to capture these intuitions in a tractable manner, and experiment with corner cases of various simulation parameters to assess the generality of the findings. Our findings may help design large-scale interventions to improve the creative aptitude of people interacting in a social network.

Dynamic computation of network statistics via updating schema.

Given a large network, computing statistics such as clustering coefficient, or modularity, is costly for large networks. When one more edge or vertex is added, traditional methods require that the full (expensive) computation be redone on this slightly modified graph. Alternatively, we introduce here a new approach: under modification to the graph, we update the statistics instead of computing them from scratch. In this paper we provide update schemes for a number of popular statistics, to include degree distribution, clustering coefficient, assortativity, and modularity. Our primary aim is to reduce the computational complexity needed to track the evolving behavior of large networks. As an important consequence, this approach provides efficient methods which may support modeling the evolution of dynamic networks to identify and understand critical transitions. Using the updating scheme, the network statistics can be computed much faster than re-calculating each time that the network evolves. We also note that the update formula can be used to determine which edge or node will lead to the extremal change of network statistics, providing a way of predicting or designing network evolution rules that would optimize some chosen statistic. We present our evolution methods in terms of a network statistics differential notation.

Information flow reveals prediction limits in online social activity.

Modern society depends on the flow of information over online social networks, and users of popular platforms generate substantial behavioural data about themselves and their social ties1-5. However, it remains unclear what fundamental limits exist when using these data to predict the activities and interests of individuals, and to what accuracy such predictions can be made using an individual's social ties. Here, we show that 95% of the potential predictive accuracy for an individual is achievable using their social ties only, without requiring that individual's data. We used information theoretic tools to estimate the predictive information in the writings of Twitter users, providing an upper bound on the available predictive information that holds for any predictive or machine learning methods. As few as 8-9 of an individual's contacts are sufficient to obtain predictability compared with that of the individual alone. Distinct temporal and social effects are visible by measuring information flow along social ties, allowing us to better study the dynamics of online activity. Our results have distinct privacy implications: information is so strongly embedded in a social network that, in principle, one can profile an individual from their available social ties even when the individual forgoes the platform completely.

Publisher Correction: Information flow reveals prediction limits in online social activity.

The original and corrected figures are shown in the accompanying Publisher Correction.

Erratum: Reducing Cascading Failure Risk by Increasing Infrastructure Network Interdependence.

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/srep44499.

Reply & Supply: Efficient crowdsourcing when workers do more than answer questions.

Crowdsourcing works by distributing many small tasks to large numbers of workers, yet the true potential of crowdsourcing lies in workers doing more than performing simple tasks-they can apply their experience and creativity to provide new and unexpected information to the crowdsourcer. One such case is when workers not only answer a crowdsourcer's questions but also contribute new questions for subsequent crowd analysis, leading to a growing set of questions. This growth creates an inherent bias for early questions since a question introduced earlier by a worker can be answered by more subsequent workers than a question introduced later. Here we study how to perform efficient crowdsourcing with such growing question sets. By modeling question sets as networks of interrelated questions, we introduce algorithms to help curtail the growth bias by efficiently distributing workers between exploring new questions and addressing current questions. Experiments and simulations demonstrate that these algorithms can efficiently explore an unbounded set of questions without losing confidence in crowd answers.

Reducing Cascading Failure Risk by Increasing Infrastructure Network Interdependence.

Increased interconnection between critical infrastructure networks, such as electric power and communications systems, has important implications for infrastructure reliability and security. Others have shown that increased coupling between networks that are vulnerable to internetwork cascading failures can increase vulnerability. However, the mechanisms of cascading in these models differ from those in real systems and such models disregard new functions enabled by coupling, such as intelligent control during a cascade. This paper compares the robustness of simple topological network models to models that more accurately reflect the dynamics of cascading in a particular case of coupled infrastructures. First, we compare a topological contagion model to a power grid model. Second, we compare a percolation model of internetwork cascading to three models of interdependent power-communication systems. In both comparisons, the more detailed models suggest substantially different conclusions, relative to the simpler topological models. In all but the most extreme case, our model of a "smart" power network coupled to a communication system suggests that increased power-communication coupling decreases vulnerability, in contrast to the percolation model. Together, these results suggest that robustness can be enhanced by interconnecting networks with complementary capabilities if modes of internetwork failure propagation are constrained.

Understanding the group dynamics and success of teams.

Complex problems often require coordinated group effort and can consume significant resources, yet our understanding of how teams form and succeed has been limited by a lack of large-scale, quantitative data. We analyse activity traces and success levels for approximately 150 000 self-organized, online team projects. While larger teams tend to be more successful, workload is highly focused across the team, with only a few members performing most work. We find that highly successful teams are significantly more focused than average teams of the same size, that their members have worked on more diverse sets of projects, and the members of highly successful teams are more likely to be core members or 'leads' of other teams. The relations between team success and size, focus and especially team experience cannot be explained by confounding factors such as team age, external contributions from non-team members, nor by group mechanisms such as social loafing. Taken together, these features point to organizational principles that may maximize the success of collaborative endeavours.

Local method for detecting communities.

We propose a method of community detection that is computationally inexpensive and possesses physical significance to a member of a social network. This method is unlike many divisive and agglomerative techniques and is local in the sense that a community can be detected within a network without requiring knowledge of the entire network. A global application of this method is also introduced. Several artificial and real-world networks, including the famous Zachary karate club, are analyzed.

Robustness of spatial micronetworks.

Power lines, roadways, pipelines, and other physical infrastructure are critical to modern society. These structures may be viewed as spatial networks where geographic distances play a role in the functionality and construction cost of links. Traditionally, studies of network robustness have primarily considered the connectedness of large, random networks. Yet for spatial infrastructure, physical distances must also play a role in network robustness. Understanding the robustness of small spatial networks is particularly important with the increasing interest in microgrids, i.e., small-area distributed power grids that are well suited to using renewable energy resources. We study the random failures of links in small networks where functionality depends on both spatial distance and topological connectedness. By introducing a percolation model where the failure of each link is proportional to its spatial length, we find that when failures depend on spatial distances, networks are more fragile than expected. Accounting for spatial effects in both construction and robustness is important for designing efficient microgrids and other network infrastructure.