IAM-PIMS Distinguished Colloquium: Mason Alexander Porter

I will discuss "simple" dynamical systems on networks and examine how network structure affects dynamics of processes running on top of networks. I'll consider results based on "locally tree-like" and/or mean-field approximations and examine when they seem to work well, what can cause them to fail, and when they seem to produce accurate results even though their hypotheses are violated fantastically. I will focus on a new model for multi-stage complex contagions, in which fanatics produce greater influence than mere followers. I will also briefly present a model for application adoption on Facebook whose temporal dynamics matches very well with real data and indicate how ideas from computational homology can give insights on simple models of social influence.