Our Small World: How Networks of People and Information Shape Our World [What Networks Can Tell Us about the World]

Mark Newman University of Michigan, SFI External Faculty

Networks can tell us many things about the systems they describe. By studying a social network we can learn who the leaders are in a community or predict how individuals will vote in an election. By studying transportation networks, such as road and airline networks, we can improve transportation efficiency, saving us time and money. By looking at the world wide web we can learn which web pages people find most useful, information that is crucial for searching the web effectively. Newman describes how we learn these things and explains some of the insights that network science has produced in areas ranging from sociology and economics to computer science and biology.