Thursday, December 14, 2017
Monday, November 26, 2012
What, Why, HOW
Lately I've gone through roughly 15 books about social psychology, crowd behavior, group emotions contagion, irrationality, and topics involving people in the society, don't panic, just for fun, no special academic interest really. It seems to me that they can be either categorized as theoretical or empirical, easy to understand right? For theoretical books, they are more like textbooks, emphasizing on definitions, principles and some sort of related examples, yuck. While for empirical thesis, more experiment-oriented, more human factors involved, and more lively. The approaches scientist/ psychologists adopt to get clear of a question is actually extremely similar: background - theory proposal - experiment - result - conclusion. It's fun to watch people acting as candidates, being tested, sometimes not aware, and giving out unexpected results at the end. Here strongly recommend Dan Ariely's books. What a fun guy!
These book enlightened me about the reason to carry out studies, the utility to define new stuff, the reason of existence of all the experiments and theories. Because if they serve only to stuff the bookshelf and can't be utilized to do anything, then they are purely junk.
So here it go. I want to concisely evaluate the utility of several factors that we calculate for SNA. I've put all stuff in my own words, so they are really lifelike and trivial...So what do they describe, and why them?
HOW -- lecture notes thanks... = =
WHAT:
Let's see some SNA analysis key factors:
Degree centrality:
the more neighbor an actor has, the easier it is for him to catch new information
Closeness centrality:
the smaller the distance, the larger the speed to spread information
Betweenness centrality:
the number of times an actor acts as a bridge along the shortest path between two other actors -- the participation of the actor during high-efficiency information propagation (since only shortest lines are counted)
WHY:
I always believe things exist for a reason, and the reason why these factor exist in the place of others is their unique irreplaceable usage.
These three factors describe the connectivity, distance and intermediate function of an entity. Imagine the flow of information: income from a neighbor->outcome to all neighbor->propagate. That's correspondingly related to degree, betweenness and closeness. Degree stands for the incoming power, betweenness describes the probability of occurence of such an action, and closeness gives the flow of information, which is a continuous process.
No matter the object is an actor or a group as a whole (as when a group is treated as a whole, it's again an actor), these three factors ideally define the life cycle of information propagation. And why not other factors like "location", "traffic load", etc? Because the fundamental structure of a network is defined by the connectivity and relationship between people (that's why we call it social network).
So here's my belief: they exist to serve functions. And there's no need to panic about the dirty maths, since after all, it's just maths. What's lying behind is the true thing that matters.
HOW
Finally I plan to go back to where I started with. It seems that we've learnt many theoretical ideas in the class. Even given some examples, it still appears quite distant from us. So to fully comprehend the idea behind SNA as well as to utilize SNA, we should design our own experiments, implement our own analysis systems to really get to know social networking. Maths is maths if left alone, however maths is everything if combined with real life cases. That's really why we need SNA and how SNA can help us mine data, grab the essence of the trends of social networks, and come up with brand-new solutions.
These book enlightened me about the reason to carry out studies, the utility to define new stuff, the reason of existence of all the experiments and theories. Because if they serve only to stuff the bookshelf and can't be utilized to do anything, then they are purely junk.
So here it go. I want to concisely evaluate the utility of several factors that we calculate for SNA. I've put all stuff in my own words, so they are really lifelike and trivial...So what do they describe, and why them?
HOW -- lecture notes thanks... = =
WHAT:
Let's see some SNA analysis key factors:
Degree centrality:
the more neighbor an actor has, the easier it is for him to catch new information
Closeness centrality:
the smaller the distance, the larger the speed to spread information
Betweenness centrality:
the number of times an actor acts as a bridge along the shortest path between two other actors -- the participation of the actor during high-efficiency information propagation (since only shortest lines are counted)
WHY:
I always believe things exist for a reason, and the reason why these factor exist in the place of others is their unique irreplaceable usage.
These three factors describe the connectivity, distance and intermediate function of an entity. Imagine the flow of information: income from a neighbor->outcome to all neighbor->propagate. That's correspondingly related to degree, betweenness and closeness. Degree stands for the incoming power, betweenness describes the probability of occurence of such an action, and closeness gives the flow of information, which is a continuous process.
No matter the object is an actor or a group as a whole (as when a group is treated as a whole, it's again an actor), these three factors ideally define the life cycle of information propagation. And why not other factors like "location", "traffic load", etc? Because the fundamental structure of a network is defined by the connectivity and relationship between people (that's why we call it social network).
So here's my belief: they exist to serve functions. And there's no need to panic about the dirty maths, since after all, it's just maths. What's lying behind is the true thing that matters.
HOW
Finally I plan to go back to where I started with. It seems that we've learnt many theoretical ideas in the class. Even given some examples, it still appears quite distant from us. So to fully comprehend the idea behind SNA as well as to utilize SNA, we should design our own experiments, implement our own analysis systems to really get to know social networking. Maths is maths if left alone, however maths is everything if combined with real life cases. That's really why we need SNA and how SNA can help us mine data, grab the essence of the trends of social networks, and come up with brand-new solutions.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Appreciation of Sociomatrix
A matrix
X of size g×g is defined to describe the connectivity inside the group, inside which
an entry xij indicates the existence of a directional link from i to
j. Such a matrix summarizes the whole status of the group and is sufficient to
include all the information needed to describe a group. One example can be:
Here the
power of X is 1, so each non-zero entry indicates a link of length 1. For example,
x12=x15=1, the physical meaning is that node 1 has an out
degree of 2, pointing to node 2 and node 5 once each.
By
taking the nth power (n < g) of X, say n=3, we obtain:
In this
case, n=3 gives all the possible paths of length 3 among the existing nodes.
The intensity of a certain entry gives the number of different paths.
Take 
=3 for
example, this means from node 1 to node 3, there exist three paths of length 3,
they each are:
=3 for
example, this means from node 1 to node 3, there exist three paths of length 3,
they each are:
Node 1 – Node 2 – Node 6 – Node 2
|
Node 1 – Node 2 – Node 3 – Node 2
|
 |
 |
Node 1 – Node 5 – Node 6 – Node 2
|
|
 |
And this
process exhausts all the possibilities.
This
matrix representation method is concise and informative for either visual
observation or statistics analysis. From my point of view, adopting matrices has advantages as follow:
1. Standardized computation.
By applying multiplication to the original matrix, we can easily obtain different level of information without introducing much computation. This way of information processing also allow computers to calculate answers in a much easier way, so that codes and programs can be as concise as possible.
2. Fixed structure of matrices
The format is still concise and matrix remains the same dimension and size as the original one. Such consistency can keep the systems function properly.
3. Easier reuse
This method is not the final goal of a topic. It's just a method used to simply other problems.
In the form of matrices, this calculation method can be easily implemented and encapsulated. In this way, black box reuse is possible, so that users don't necessarily need to know the exact calculation methodologies behind it, instead the numbers say for themselves, and should be enough to explain problems.
4. Can you guys think of more advantages? :)
1. Standardized computation.
By applying multiplication to the original matrix, we can easily obtain different level of information without introducing much computation. This way of information processing also allow computers to calculate answers in a much easier way, so that codes and programs can be as concise as possible.
2. Fixed structure of matrices
The format is still concise and matrix remains the same dimension and size as the original one. Such consistency can keep the systems function properly.
3. Easier reuse
This method is not the final goal of a topic. It's just a method used to simply other problems.
In the form of matrices, this calculation method can be easily implemented and encapsulated. In this way, black box reuse is possible, so that users don't necessarily need to know the exact calculation methodologies behind it, instead the numbers say for themselves, and should be enough to explain problems.
4. Can you guys think of more advantages? :)
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Reflection on Lecture 6
- What was the
epistemic aims in
(1) Class Activity One (individual work) and
(2) Class Activity Two (group work)?
- Is there any change in epistemic aim? If so, why did you change your aims?
(1) Class Activity One (individual work) and
(2) Class Activity Two (group work)?
- Is there any change in epistemic aim? If so, why did you change your aims?
- How did you approach
to the problem individually and in group, respectively?
- Is there any differences in the processes involved?
- Is there any differences in the processes involved?
For activity one, the aim is to obtain the explicit or
implicit answer from the given text, possibly by extracting, in-depth thinking
and paraphrasing, depending on the structure of the text itself. The process
would be: glance to grip the major points; read thoroughly; search for answers
in a detailed focused way. This scheme of study helps us generally understand
the passage as well as be able to track details.
Comparatively, for activity two, since we already have
formed our own understanding, the epistemic aim switches to a higher level –
reorganization of concepts through idea exchange. By observing others’ learning
outcome and format of study, we are able to reflect thoughts from a different
aspect, which we don’t have in the first place. This process enables us to refine
not only the answer to the question itself, but also the way of thinking, the
presentation of ideas, and some higher level cognitive factors.
This smooth change is due the steady growth in understanding
of the problem, as various opinions from various parties can represent
different ways of thinking. Such differences can enlighten the whole group.
2. Is there any
difference in terms of individual and group epistemic cognition, how?
My answer would be yes. Individuals rely on their personal
experiences to solve problems with some structured ways, and the focus is
strictly on the question itself. No feedback or opinion from a third party will
come to complete the possibly flawed perception. This kind of epistemic cognition
relies more on contextual refinement without the help of others. However group
discussion and collaboration highlights the dynamic combination of various
thoughts: how they conflict, why they exist, how to solve, etc. This people
interaction is a new platform of learning and obtaining fresh ideas to solve
specific questions. Usually the spark between people and the art of
coordination is the key element for the finalization of an answer.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
The Incredible Rumors
While facilitating peoples’ exchange of knowledge, thoughts and ideas, social media provide a perfect hotbed for the speculation of rumors. Political news that easily arouses peoples’ attention and creates dissatisfaction or doubt towards the government, social news that’s closely related to daily lives and thus create a strong vicarious empathy among the crowd, and some health-related topics that focuses on ordinary peoples’ way of health preserving, among all of which exist a tremendous amount of rumors. By making use of various properties of human being, creators of these rumors are turning social network into a place where words are less trustworthy. In this blog I try trivially using some ideas mentioned in the class that are probably related to this situation, so as to investigate the underlying reasons.
Why rumors exist?
1. Will to Misuse Emotions
The government controls every means of media by means of kinds of censorship, while a large group of people are fond of attacking the loopholes. [1] The more the government wants to “hide” from the audience, the more likely these people will fight back. However this positive will of claiming freedom is misused by some anti-social, anti-government entities who don’t want peace but chaos for the society. Falsely coined accuses against government officers and police, fake appeals for morality through malicious setting of stories, and other rich, emotional storytelling can easily arouse people’s pity and attention. Being true or not is no longer the key focus of the public.
2. Misinterpretations
Certain rumors are just due to the contorting nature of word passing. Second handed information, segments of the original messages and reinterpretations are all key factors to misinterpretations. While the writers might not be intentionally malicious, different parties could make use of the distorted words and spread them randomly.
3. Low cost
The cost of coining a piece rumor is close to zero, and the avalanche effect that will be brought along far exceeds the cost.
Why rumors spread?
1. Lack of Responsibility
Social network is somehow similar to real life social groups, except that it relieves people from some compulsory duties when a person becomes an anonymous entity. Deindividuation appears when entities take no responsibilities during passing along fake news, when they might act more hostile or less careful compared with their normal status.
2. Humans’ “Better Safe Than Sorry” Nature
Some people can spread news even though they are just partially convinced, driven by the “better safe than sorry” thinking. Examples can be donation-raising, volunteer help for countryside children, or simply a union of power to fight against some certain party.
3. Power of Models
Certain figures serve as role models among the whole society, so if that group of people spread news without careful investigation, a large group of people can join alongside, by mistake.
4. Lower cognitive level
The fast pace of society and the overwhelming amount of information stops people from thinking deeply and thoroughly, with their limited time. Less time leads to a lower level of cognitive thinking. Without processing the information, people are prone to believing instead of doubting.
5. Herd Behavior
People’s nature of following crowds and believing in common beliefs eases the spread of rumors. The more a piece of news is re-twitted, the larger the increase rate is in terms of its propagation in time and space, until it reaches a threshold. [2]
6. High cost to clarify facts
While it takes almost nothing to create a rumor, it takes time and labor to clarify the truth. Compared with appalling rumors, truths always seem more tedious, which will stop people from spreading them and buying them. Human’s tendency to stay in the same place also stops them from believing an absolute opposite point of view.
Conclustion: There are way too many reasons behind this issue, so i can just pinpoint a tiny portion of them, which already seems a bit messy and boring=((((. If it's possible, could you also randomly drop some bomb? =) And welcome to leave any comment you like.
References:
[1] H. Gao, Rumor, Lies, and Weibo: How Social Media is Changing the Nature of Truth in China, The Atlantic [Online]. Available:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/rumor-lies-and-weibo-how-social-media-is-changing-the-nature-of-truth-in-china/255916/
[2] B. Doerr, M. Fouz, T. Friedrich, Why Rumors Spread Fast in Social Network, Communications of the ACM, 2012 Available:
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~tfried/paper/2012CACM.pdf
Why rumors exist?
1. Will to Misuse Emotions
The government controls every means of media by means of kinds of censorship, while a large group of people are fond of attacking the loopholes. [1] The more the government wants to “hide” from the audience, the more likely these people will fight back. However this positive will of claiming freedom is misused by some anti-social, anti-government entities who don’t want peace but chaos for the society. Falsely coined accuses against government officers and police, fake appeals for morality through malicious setting of stories, and other rich, emotional storytelling can easily arouse people’s pity and attention. Being true or not is no longer the key focus of the public.
2. Misinterpretations
Certain rumors are just due to the contorting nature of word passing. Second handed information, segments of the original messages and reinterpretations are all key factors to misinterpretations. While the writers might not be intentionally malicious, different parties could make use of the distorted words and spread them randomly.
3. Low cost
The cost of coining a piece rumor is close to zero, and the avalanche effect that will be brought along far exceeds the cost.
Why rumors spread?
1. Lack of Responsibility
Social network is somehow similar to real life social groups, except that it relieves people from some compulsory duties when a person becomes an anonymous entity. Deindividuation appears when entities take no responsibilities during passing along fake news, when they might act more hostile or less careful compared with their normal status.
2. Humans’ “Better Safe Than Sorry” Nature
Some people can spread news even though they are just partially convinced, driven by the “better safe than sorry” thinking. Examples can be donation-raising, volunteer help for countryside children, or simply a union of power to fight against some certain party.
3. Power of Models
Certain figures serve as role models among the whole society, so if that group of people spread news without careful investigation, a large group of people can join alongside, by mistake.
4. Lower cognitive level
The fast pace of society and the overwhelming amount of information stops people from thinking deeply and thoroughly, with their limited time. Less time leads to a lower level of cognitive thinking. Without processing the information, people are prone to believing instead of doubting.
5. Herd Behavior
People’s nature of following crowds and believing in common beliefs eases the spread of rumors. The more a piece of news is re-twitted, the larger the increase rate is in terms of its propagation in time and space, until it reaches a threshold. [2]
6. High cost to clarify facts
While it takes almost nothing to create a rumor, it takes time and labor to clarify the truth. Compared with appalling rumors, truths always seem more tedious, which will stop people from spreading them and buying them. Human’s tendency to stay in the same place also stops them from believing an absolute opposite point of view.
Conclustion: There are way too many reasons behind this issue, so i can just pinpoint a tiny portion of them, which already seems a bit messy and boring=((((. If it's possible, could you also randomly drop some bomb? =) And welcome to leave any comment you like.
References:
[1] H. Gao, Rumor, Lies, and Weibo: How Social Media is Changing the Nature of Truth in China, The Atlantic [Online]. Available:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/rumor-lies-and-weibo-how-social-media-is-changing-the-nature-of-truth-in-china/255916/
[2] B. Doerr, M. Fouz, T. Friedrich, Why Rumors Spread Fast in Social Network, Communications of the ACM, 2012 Available:
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~tfried/paper/2012CACM.pdf
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Introspection into social media's drawbacks
The past two weeks opened a new window to observe the current network trends from an engineer’s point of view: what social media are, how and why they are gaining the dominant position, and how they are affecting people’s lives while being driven to adapt themselves to better cater to users’ needs. The prosperity of social network is a legend, bringing along a huge chance for the whole industry: new algorithms, new schemes for data storage and mining as well as new ways of doing business. As from the lecture, communication, entertainment and business each corresponds to the first three types of applications, while the last one, forecasting, combines political, social and commercial properties.
Despite all the fancy numbers and charts, standing from a user’s point of view, the rapid expansion of social network could also have some drawbacks to users’ daily lives.
1. Unnecessary yet OBSESSIVE compulsory
As a victim of social websites, I’ve read tons of reports judging how social media jeopardize peoples’ patience, chop intact timeslots into pieces and suck them all up. Users’ obsessive compulsory to check new updates has made its way with the aid of ubiquitous wireless network and the popularity of 3G cellphone. These totally unnecessary behaviors effectively reduce the efficiency of peoples’ work and study, while people are too addicted to get over them.
2. Dilemma of choice
Here’s a comic from www.joyoftech.com, describing a choice dilemma, sometimes referred to as Choice Phobia Disorder. The competitive market of social websites creates a fair chance for every developer with minimum setup to join, in which way numerous websites surge to fight for users’ attention, for example, just to name a few, FB, twitter, imdb, instagram (overseas); renren, weibo, douban (PRC). Each time a user needs to update a status, he or she has to choose among them all. Different social groups with various verified “friends” do differentiate some of them from the others, but the overall overwhelming existence is still too much to handle.
3. Farther distance from the society
With social media, people communicate through characters and easily get content by browsing picture profiles instead of seeing the person himself/herself. Indifferent comments, digitized pictures, symbolized preferences and some wrong interpretation of traditional words such as “like” and “friend”, these contorted factors are all driving people away from the simplest way of making friends, e.g. the concept of “friend” on facebook is somehow drifted away from its original meaning already.
On the other hand, people are not willing to reveal very personal details to the public, so the idea of absolutely closing the gap between people is yet more like a fantasy, which no one knows exactly when it’s ever gonna be achieved after all.
However, this blog doesn’t serve to deny the whole existence of social media, since they are still doing tremendous help to the society. On the other hand, there can be many more aspects on the drawback of social media. So welcome to leave a comment of how you think of the current trend, and maybe even pinpoint some possible solutions?
References:
[1] Robin Dunbar, http://phys.org/news183791343.html
Despite all the fancy numbers and charts, standing from a user’s point of view, the rapid expansion of social network could also have some drawbacks to users’ daily lives.
1. Unnecessary yet OBSESSIVE compulsory
As a victim of social websites, I’ve read tons of reports judging how social media jeopardize peoples’ patience, chop intact timeslots into pieces and suck them all up. Users’ obsessive compulsory to check new updates has made its way with the aid of ubiquitous wireless network and the popularity of 3G cellphone. These totally unnecessary behaviors effectively reduce the efficiency of peoples’ work and study, while people are too addicted to get over them.
2. Dilemma of choice
Here’s a comic from www.joyoftech.com, describing a choice dilemma, sometimes referred to as Choice Phobia Disorder. The competitive market of social websites creates a fair chance for every developer with minimum setup to join, in which way numerous websites surge to fight for users’ attention, for example, just to name a few, FB, twitter, imdb, instagram (overseas); renren, weibo, douban (PRC). Each time a user needs to update a status, he or she has to choose among them all. Different social groups with various verified “friends” do differentiate some of them from the others, but the overall overwhelming existence is still too much to handle.
3. Farther distance from the society
With social media, people communicate through characters and easily get content by browsing picture profiles instead of seeing the person himself/herself. Indifferent comments, digitized pictures, symbolized preferences and some wrong interpretation of traditional words such as “like” and “friend”, these contorted factors are all driving people away from the simplest way of making friends, e.g. the concept of “friend” on facebook is somehow drifted away from its original meaning already.
According to Robin Dunbar (Oxford University's professor of evolutionary anthropology), after you have amassed 150 friends on Facebook, any more are meaningless because the human brain can only remember 150 meaningful relationships anyway[1].
On the other hand, people are not willing to reveal very personal details to the public, so the idea of absolutely closing the gap between people is yet more like a fantasy, which no one knows exactly when it’s ever gonna be achieved after all.
However, this blog doesn’t serve to deny the whole existence of social media, since they are still doing tremendous help to the society. On the other hand, there can be many more aspects on the drawback of social media. So welcome to leave a comment of how you think of the current trend, and maybe even pinpoint some possible solutions?
References:
[1] Robin Dunbar, http://phys.org/news183791343.html
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