Scale-free networks, a controversial topic solved by extreme mathematics
In 2016 a company calculated that the average number of followers in Twitter was about 707. Although this might already sound like a lot, it pales in comparison with the top Twitter users. There are currently more than 100 users that have more than ten million followers. Some, like Barack Obama or Katy Perry, even have more than one hundred million followers, which is roughly 140.000 times larger than the average.
How the popular become even more popular
Many networks, from technological to social networks, and from the world-wide web to collaboration networks, have a hub-like structure. Why is this the case, and why are they not much more homogeneous?
Degrees in graphs IV: degrees in large real-world networks
How are elements in real-world networks connected? That is the question we aim to answer in this post. Most real-world networks turn out to be extremely inhomogeneous.
Why the whole world has seen Gangnam style
Have you ever wondered what makes a video go viral? Or how it is possible that they can spread so quickly? Maybe you didn't (that's fine), but many economists, marketeers, and even mathematicians have wondered.