Peter Marbach

Professeur invité de l’ENS au département d’Informatique dans l’équipe Dyogene en janvier et février 2015.

Il donnera une conférence sur le thème du Social Networks le

Mercredi 14 janvier 2015 à 17h00. Salle Henri Cartan, 2e sous sol, Aile Rataud, École normale supérieure, 45 rue d’Ulm

Portrait de Peter MarbachSocial Networks : A Research Vision and some Results

Social network are very natural and familiar to us. Everyday, we use our social networks to interact with friends, co-workers, or members of our community. We use social networks for a variety of purposes be it for a friendly chat, getting advise on how to proceed with a project, or discussing what is happening in our community. Given that social networks are so familiar to us, and we use them so frequently in our everyday life, one would expect that we understand them very well. In particular, one would expect that we have a clear understanding of why we form social networks, how we form them, and how we use them. However, this does not seem to be the case. The question that we want to study whether it is possible to create a deeper and formal understanding of social networks by developing mathematical models that accurately describe why and how social networks are formed, and how we use social networks. As part of the talk, we will present results that provide some evidence that this might be indeed possible.