Author Archives: John Roe

Blogging Theme for Week 13

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For this week, as a theme, I’d suggest “the spread of epidemics in a social network”.   “Epidemic” of course sounds like a disease, but also the spread of new ideas (recycling?) or technologies (solar panels, maybe?) can be thought of as a kind of epidemic.

Here is a link to a TED talk about this sort of idea.  To identify the network nodes which were most likely to be highly connected (and therefore contribute most to the spread across the network) the researchers used a simple trick: have people nominate their friends.  This works because, as we briefly discussed in class, the average person’s average friend is likely to be better connected than the average person.

Remember that, as always, the theme above is only a suggestion.  You are welcome to post on any relevant topic, including one of the earlier suggested themes.  Here is a list of those:

 

Events Schedule for Week 13

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Here is the schedule for the coming week

      • Monday 4/13,  2:30 – 3:20, Class – Case Study “Climate Networks” –  John Baez (UC Riverside)
      • Monday 4/13,  4:00-5:00, Kaley Weinstein’s office hour and tech support (101 McAllister)
      • Tuesday 4/14 3:30-4:30, Sara Jamshidi’s office hours, 419 McAllister
      • Tuesday 4/13 6:00-8:00 PARTY at John and Liane Roe’s house.  Directions/invitation have been sent by email.   RSVP if you plan to be there, and hope many of you can make it!
      • Wednesday 4/15 2:30 – 3:20, Class – Unit 4.2
      • Thursday 4/16, 10:30 – 12:00, John Roe’s office hours, 204 McAllister
      • Friday 4/17, 2:30 – 3:20, Unit 4.2 (continued)

Readings for  classes are available at

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hcybveug0txcrdh/AAANwF70aqdBlqlD

For Wednesday and Friday classes we will be looking at decision making in networks – that is, where your neighbor’s decisions affect what you do.  The class reading, Chapter 6 of the Easley-Kleinberg book, has been posted.  Please study sections 6.1 through 6.4 for Wednesday.

 

California groundwater article

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Here’s an article from the New York Times today: “Beneath California’s Crops, Groundwater Crisis Grows.”

This might make a subject for a blog post.  As well as the specifics of the CA situation, think about the metaphors that the NYT feels it appropriate to use to explain stock-flow ideas to its intended audience.

See also this blog post from Andy Rivkin, which has lots of references for further reading.

 

Blogging theme for week 12

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It has been good to talk to some of you in office hours about ideas for your blog posts.  I encourage you all to make use of the support provided in office hours to make your blog contributions the best that they can be.

For this week my suggested theme is  “The Anthropocene”.  This term showed up in Chris Uhl’s talk last week.  It has been suggested to describe an epoch (a period of geological time) in which the geologic history of the whole Earth becomes dominated by human influence.

You could blog about the process which leads to such an “official” designation, the evidence for a new geologic era, and how present human-influenced characteristics of the natural world (e.g. rate of species extinction) compare to previous epochs.

Remember that, as always, the theme is only a suggestion.  You are welcome to post on any relevant topic, including one of the earlier suggested themes.  Here is a list of those:

 

Events schedule for week 12

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Here is the schedule for the coming week

      • Monday 4/6,  2:30 – 3:20, Class – Case Study “The Bystander Effect” – this will take up some of our probability ideas and use them to lead in to the last part of the course, on network theory.
      • Monday 4/6,  4:00-5:00, Kaley Weinstein’s office hour and tech support (101 McAllister)
      • Monday 4/6, 3:30 to Wednesday 4/8, 2:30, Midterm 2 available via ANGEL
      • Tuesday 4/7 3:30-4:30, Sara Jamshidi’s office hours, 419 McAllister
      • Wednesday 4/8 2:30 – 3:20, Class – Review of Midterm 2
      • Thursday 4/9, 10:30 – 12:00, John Roe’s office hours, 204 McAllister
      • Friday 4/10, 2:30 – 3:20, Unit 4.1
      • Tuesday 4/14, party at John and Liane Roe’s house.  RSVP via email please.

Readings for  classes are available at

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hcybveug0txcrdh/AAANwF70aqdBlqlD