Cathy Wang

Because of the nature of our interconnectivity in a complex network, if one of us fails all of us fails. The example of a power network breaking down causing multiple power outage in several state is a perfect example. “When a network acts as a transportation system, a local failure shifts loads or responsibilities to other nodes.” (Barabasi, 2001) This will cause the whole system to fail because the neighbors cannot afford the load. It’s like a chain-effect that won’t stop. Cascading failure is the price to pay for topological robustness. If the hub is attacked, all the links linked to the hub will fail.

Even after reading and creating a whole project relating to Fibonacci series, I never really got the real essence of it.

Finally here comes a great illustration from :
What the Hell is the Fibonacci Series?

so simple and yet so complicated.

It is even more valuable to apply Fibonacci Series in different social context.

(Via info design.)

I am thinking that it must be a bad weekend for servers or there is a huge attack on internet that brought down lots of nodes. It’s weird enough that kaon is down and now the other link I want to introduce is down too. TheBrain is a network visualization tool. It can map the physical network including printers. It can also map a virtual network with all the users connected. However, TheBrain is more of a network management software.

I guess it would be useful to look at. TheBrain functions differently. I actually searched somewhere along the line of ontology to find out about this site. I think this is where internet toplogiest’s theories can be applied into real world situations. (I am not implying that internet is not real world.) By studying the system/network/interconnectivity of the internet, can we … Read More »

While reading the 4th link – small world from the “Linked” by Barabasi, a quote triggered me. “Such coffeehouse philosophy rarely leads to serious research.” Six degrees of separation is a coffeehouse philosophy because people talk about it as if it’s just a fun topic to talk about. However, this gloomy afternoon, in the coffeehouse, I saw the coffeehouse philosophy at work.

These middle-aged couple walked in the door and sat down sipping their coffee. I think I recognize them. They must be familiars from the old coffeehouse I worked in before. At the counter, young teenager girl is serving coffee. I think I worked with her before but I really can’t remember. The owner walks in and said hi to me and says hi to the hairstylist who works next door, who, coincidentally gave me a free haircut once. I … Read More »

Complex network is vulnerable because it’s strong interconnectivity. It might be one of the biggest characteristic and one of its best features; however, it becomes a vulnerable point where the network can be easily attacked. Robustness means how a cell survives and function under different external conditions and internal errors. In order to achieve robustness, it is essential to learn from interconnectivity. The tolerance shown in a cell is the range of error it processes. Basically, under the theory of topological robustness, removing only a few nodes will do very little impact on the whole network. Only if the number of removed nodes reaches certain critical point the system would start corrupting.

Basically if we think like a terrorist, we would understand that there’s no point of having 100 anonymous citizens as hostage to negotiate any deal with the government. The … Read More »