[Sci-all-l] Asprey lectures

[Cristian Opazo]

A follow up to Ben's email, from today's Times: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/science/31essa.html

Enjoy,

Cristian



Benjamin Lotto wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I would like to encourage all of you to come to Jon Kleinberg's first  
> lecture, "Modeling the Web, Mining my E-mail, and Other Perspectives  
> on the Information Revolution," on Wednesday evening at 8pm in Rocky  
> 300. Try to bring a non-major friend or two, noting especially the  
> last sentence of the following abstract:
>
>>  The rise of large-scale information networks such as the World  Wide 
>> Web
>> has been a profound and transformative development, and the terrain
>> surrounding these systems is at once social, political, technological,
>> and mathematical.  Some of the basic techniques for managing  
>> information
>> at this scale, as well as some of our working metaphors for  interacting
>> with this information, have their roots in fundamental mathematical
>> models, and we survey several that have played crucial roles over the
>> past decade. These include the use of network analysis in the current
>> generation of Web search engines; the modeling of temporal  phenomena in
>> tracking news, discussion, commentary, and blogging over time; and the
>> role of human social networks in the foundations of current on-line  
>> media.
>> The lecture will be self-contained, and in particular will assume
>> no prior background in any of these topics.
>
>
> Professor Kleinberg is also giving a second lecture, "Search Problems  
> and Complex Networks," on Thursday afternoon at 4:30pm in Rocky 300.  
> It is a version of the Nevanlinna Prize lecture he gave at the  
> International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid in August.  Here's  
> the abstract:
>
>> The study of complex networks has emerged over the past several  
>> years as
>> a theme spanning many disciplines, ranging from mathematics and  
>> computer
>> science to the social and biological sciences.  A significant  amount of
>> recent work in this area has focused on the development of  
>> probabilistic
>> and algorithmic models that capture some of the qualitative properties
>> observed in large-scale network data; such models have the  potential to
>> help us reason, at a general level, about the ways in which real-world
>> networks are organized.
>>
>> We discuss one particular line of network research, concerned with
>> small-world phenomena and decentralized search algorithms, that
>> illustrates this style of analysis.  We begin by describing a well- 
>> known
>> experiment that provided the first empirical basis for the ``six  
>> degrees
>> of separation'' phenomenon in social networks; we then discuss some
>> probabilistic network models motivated by this work, illustrating how
>> these models lead to novel algorithmic and combinatorial questions,  and
>> how they are supported by recent empirical studies of large social
>> networks.
>
>
> I hope to see you there on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon!
>
> Thanks,
> -Ben Lotto
>
> -- 
> Benjamin Lotto
> Chair, Department of Mathematics & College Marshal
> Box 349 / Vassar College / Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
> ph: 845-437-7180, fax: 845-437-7544
> email: lotto [at] vassar [dot] edu
> office hours (F06): M 3-4:30, T 10-11:30
>
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