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Concept
Small-world network
Summary
A small-world network is a mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but the neighbors of any given node are likely to be neighbors of each other. Due to this, most neighboring nodes can be reached from every other node by a small number of hops or steps. Specifically, a small-world network is defined to be a network where the typical distance L between two randomly chosen nodes (the number of steps required) grows proportionally to the logarithm of the number of nodes N in the network, that is:
while the global clustering coefficient is not small.
In the context of a social network, this results in the small world phenomenon of strangers being linked by a short chain of acquaintances. Many empirical graphs show the small-world effect, including social networks, wikis such as Wikipedia, gene networks, and even the underlying architecture of the Internet. It is the inspiration for many network-on-chip architectures in contemporary computer hardware.
A certain category of small-world networks were identified as a class of random graphs by Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz in 1998. They noted that graphs could be classified according to two independent structural features, namely the clustering coefficient, and average node-to-node distance (also known as average shortest path length). Purely random graphs, built according to the Erdős–Rényi (ER) model, exhibit a small average shortest path length (varying typically as the logarithm of the number of nodes) along with a small clustering coefficient. Watts and Strogatz measured that in fact many real-world networks have a small average shortest path length, but also a clustering coefficient significantly higher than expected by random chance. Watts and Strogatz then proposed a novel graph model, currently named the Watts and Strogatz model, with (i) a small average shortest path length, and (ii) a large clustering coefficient. The crossover in the Watts–Strogatz model between a "large world" (such as a lattice) and a small world was first described by Barthelemy and Amaral in 1999.
Official source
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