We sink our teeth into threshold model of contagion on random networks. Nom, nom. We first recap Watts's basic network model and Granovetter's classic mean-field version. We then see how the two models are connected in the right limits, and focus in on the robust-yet-fragile story for what amount to critical mass type models in the mean-field version. We use generating function techniques to find the size of the giant component of vulnerable nodes, giving us the possibility that a global spreading event could occur, and we find the probabilty such an event is triggered by a single random seed.

Bill Walton, tarot card updates, Great Point-Coatue mission on Nantucket with bonus seals, periodic table of advice animals, memes, and the use of ragdoll cats as bowling balls.

Always good to turn on the video recording at the start.

2016/03/29

1:16:54