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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 511.5 EAN: 9780393325423 ISBN: 0393325423 Label: W. W. Norton & Company Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 368 Publication Date: 2004-02 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Studio: W. W. Norton & Company Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: You may be only six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, but would he let you borrow his car? It depends on the structures within the network that links you. When the power goes out, when we find that a stranger knows someone we know, when dot-com stocks soar in price, networks are evident. In Six Degrees, sociologist Duncan Watts examines networks like these: what they are, how they're being studied, and what we can use them for. To illustrate the often complicated mathematics that describe such structures, Watts uses plenty of examples from life, without which this book would quickly move beyond a general science readership. Small chapters make each thought-provoking conclusion easy to swallow, though some are hard to digest. For instance, in a short bit on "coercive externalities," Watts sums up sociological research showing that: "Conversations concerning politics displayed a consistent pattern .... On election day, the strongest predictor of electoral success was not which party an individual privately supported but which party he or she expected would win." Six Degrees attempts to help readers understand the new and exciting field of networks and complexity. While considerably more demanding than a general book like The Tipping Point, it offers readers a snapshot of a riveting moment in science, when understanding things like disease epidemics and the stock market seems almost within our reach. --Therese Littleton Product Description: Combining a historical survey of the field with real-world examples, this book sets out to explain the research being done to create a blueprint of our connected planet, and shows how a multidiciplinary science of networks has come into being. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - awesome readThis book describes networks and every thing about them. Duncan watts makes the subject accessible to everyone. I enjoyed it greatly. Rating:  - The end of the beginning of a new science"Six Degrees" is, above all, a story, told from the perspective of one of its personages: the story of the "newborn" science of networks. The narration counterpoints the development of the author's arguments, which are served in an appealing dish flavored with entertaining views on the backstage of academic research. The author's "Odyssey" departs from his Ithaca, the actual town where Watts was studying crickets' synchronization, at Cornell University. While trying to understand the ... Read More Rating: - Powerful introduction to network theoryThis text is an introduction to the science of networks, addressed to the layman. In it, Duncan Watts sums up the most recent (until 2003) developments in network theory, offering summaries of actual scholarly papers written by him or other network scientists that an ordinary Joe would not otherwise have had the technical means to understand. This text goes a little deeper into theory than [[ASIN:0393324427 Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks], a feature which - in ... Read More Rating: - Real-world networks are the result of nonrandom structureRandom Graph Theory: Image throwing a box full of buttons on a table and then choosing a pair of buttons at random and connect them with a piece of string. What would the buttons look like over a period of time. "In particular, what features could we prove that all such networks must have?" If you pickup one of the buttons what would be its connected component? "The fraction of the nodes connected in a single component change suddenly when the average number of links per node exceeds one." If ... Read More Rating: - Opens up the worldWe used this book in a doctoral seminar addressing shifting practices of "meaning making" in a networked society. It was the one book that everyone agreed was outstanding in all areas: aside from the depth and level of scholarship in Watts's work, he also has an extremely approachable style, one that will make the book useful to scholars and laymen alike. |
