Courtsey: thesituationist

Social Networks pervade the internet.Facebook CEO, Mark Zukerberg  often talks about social graphs and the new emerging business  model(and what not). Despite the apparent failure of Facebook to  leverage its business potential , there is a ring of truth in the  almost prophetic pronouncement of the CEO of the biggest social  network site.

Just like links have deep mathematical structures (which Google  exploited to the hilt), Social Networks have even deeper and more  meaningful structures ready to be exploited. And it has mathematical  precedence as a study of Network Theory.

Starting with isolated research in the early twentieth century , and  following with significant gaps in research progress, network theory  has recently formed a broad theoretical discipline. And it has just  just come of age. The most appealing aspect is the live and  extensive hot bed to test and exploit its theories in the form of  Social Networks like Facebook,Myspace, Orkut etc.

Network Theory fits within a broader theoretical discipline known as  complexity theory(the study of complex systems). Complexity theory is interdisciplinary and studies complexity on  multiple levels. Example of complex systems include weather  patterns, food webs, traffic flow. Network Theory is a subset of  complexity theory that specifically studies complex networks. These  theories overlap and influence each other and their boundaries are  fuzzy.

In this series I will shine a light on the results in Network theory  and how they can be leveraged to push social network marketing to a  totally new level. Think Yahoo catalogs and then think Google’s  intelligent search engine, I am talking about that kind of level up.

You must have heard of “ small world effect“, and if not that  then you surely must have heard of “ six degrees of separation“. It  is hypothesized that you are separated by anyone else in the tangled  network with average of six: means that there is someone who knows  someone who knows someone who knows you. The average length of this  chain is six.Now this is a very powerful result. And once you see  something powerful, the best thing is to start asking questions–  lots of it: How can I leverage it? Can it explain something that we  have noticed already? How can I manage that change now that I know this?  Can I innovate on it? Does it open a new dimension for marketing? If  yes then how can I get on it and exploit it?

It is very important to ask these kind of questions because the  questions themselves(even if you don’t have an answer right now)  show you that we find marketing space crowded only because we have  not discovered other marketing dimensions. Imagine living in a two dimensional  world and all of a sudden discovering the third dimension, and think  what kind of mobility that knowledge will give you.

These kind of results are fundamentally different from tactics  marketers apply to navigate through the crowd. These kind of results  show you new dimensions, not just how to eke out a living in an  already crowded space. And it is extremely important that you  yourself ask the questions before you see the answers.

And in short, what is that phenomena again? The phenomena is Network  theory which opens up a new dimensions in internet marketing, and  more precisely social network marketing. And when a new dimension  opens up the rules change, even for the dimensions you are already  working on.

It is very important that you think about it. Leave your thoughts, questions etc in the comments and I will try to address most of them plus what I have to say in my next post.

As Discovery Channel would say –”Think again.”

Tags: Complex systems, Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Social network

Courtsey : http://www.cindoc.csic.es

Imagine millions of neurons made up of simple chemical substances. And when they are meshed together they give rise to an amazing phenomena what we call as human brain.The magic of human brain does not occur because of the individual neurons but because of the way they are connected. Any system has two parts: component and connections. Almost always it is the type of connections which govern the system’s behavior.And those connections give rise to behavior which (more…)

Tags: Applications, Combinatorics, Complex systems, Connectivity, Emergence, Graph theory, Human brain, Math, World Wide Web

Coutsey : www.scu.edu

There are a few books which impact you on so many levels and from so many angles. ‘ Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty‘ by Prof. Muhammad Yunus is one of them for me. The book is about the story of Grameen-Bank and how it came about, how it expanded and how it changed the life of millions of people. The book is just unputdownable.(Grameen-Bank and Prof.Yunus got the Noble Peace Prize in 2006.) I read around 200 pages in just first sitting.(it has 277 pages.)Through this book I witnessed the very soul of entrepreneurship and have gleaned some lessons for you:

(1) Believe in the creative spirit of yourself and others around you. When Prof.Yunus started the Grameen Bank his basic premise was the power of creativity of the borrowers of micro-loans. Without believing in the creative spirit of the poor borrowers, there is no way micro lending would have succeeded. Even if you are just self employed, if you believe in the creativity of your model and the people who use it, quickly your model will be adopted far and wide. That is also what happened with open source technology.

(2)An entrepreneur has to see through social conditioning. Entrepreneurship has one major thing in common with philosophy of science. That thing is (more…)

Tags: Bank, Banker to the Poor, Business, Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize, Poverty

SocialRank seemed like a brilliant idea. You get to the far flung niches and aggregate and rank the blogs in each niche.And you get a huge market of eyeballs. And not only our intuition but also a mathematical idea supported this assumption.That mathematical idea is called ‘The Long Tail‘, much popularized by Chris Anderson in his book of the same name.I remember that this book was touted as the prime inspiration for the creation of SocialRank. When I first heard about it I was excited too. I was supposed to architect and program the algorithm which would do the job.And so I did.

As the work progressed, I took a peek into the book, which was the basis of the SocialRank marketing strategy. The more I thought about the idea the more it seemed dubious. And one of the major factors pointing towards the unsoundness of the idea was the mathematical giant named Benoit B.Mandelbrot(He invented Fractal Mathematics and he is called the father of Chaos Theory).He wrote in one of his papers (more…)

Tags: Anita Elberse, Chris Anderson, Education, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School, Long Tail, Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

“Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love”

~ Einstein.

Last time I talked about Quantum Tunneling, a strange phenomena whereby particles tunnel through barriers where they are not supposed to be according to classical physics.

But according to Quantum Physics, this phenomena happens at precisely the rate the maths of quantum physics predicts.

Quantum tunneling is the secret behind the tunnel diode. So, the next time you listen to a high quality stereo music, remember that none of it would have existed if quantum tunneling did not exist.

Today I will talk about Time Travel. (more…)

Tags: Einstein, General Relativity, Kip Thorne, Quantum mechanics, Relativity, Stephen Hawking, Time Travel

“You are not thinking.You are merely being logical.”

~ Neils Bohr to Einstein when Einstein rejected the Quantum Theory.

Stephen Hawking founded a new branch of physics called quantum cosmology. At first glance it may sound quite paradoxical since quantum physics is the physics of very small sub atomic particles and cosmology is the physics of very large and distant objects like stars and galaxy. And the laws of physics governing the micro world and the macro world are so different that they seem irreconcilable.

It is the idea of quantum cosmology which holds the key to the feasibility of parallel universe. (more…)

Tags: Einstein, Quantum mechanics, Theory of Relativity

I have been asked, why this potpourri?(For another thread of answer see the about page).
Wouldn’t it be better if I stick to just one topic(say,entrepreneurship or maths)? This potpourri gives an impression that there is no unifying  theme,it is haphazard.

I have to say that this view springs from a false notion. And that is the notion of ’scholasticism’, that we study theory according to fixed demarcated subjects. While in reality, real thinkers don’t think in terms of subjects. What motivates them is questions; deep, penetrating, burning,eternal questions. The question is the  unifying theme, not a category. Why do the stars shine? Why are some  people rich and some poor? Is there a soul? How can I get her to like me?etc.

Any great advance comes not through religiously becoming a scholar of a particular subject, but from following a particular question and going down the rabbit hole.Take for example the advent of computers.Computer technology was actually a result of trying to solve a philosophical riddle concerning the foundations of mathematics (also noted by Gregory Chaitin).

Stage 1-Russel’s Paradox:The story started with Bertrand Russel. He was a well known mathematician turned philosopher turned humanist. He saw some troubling paradoxes in philosophy. One of them is the following: “In a small town there is a barber. And he shaves all those who do not shave themselves(and not anyone else). Does he shave himself?” At once you can see a paradox in this question.If he shaves himself then he is shaving someone who shaves himself. Hence he cannot shave himself. If he is not shaving himself then he is not shaving someone who does not shave himself in the town. Hence, he cannot not shave himself. We reach totally opposite conclusions each time.(Actually his statement is set theoretic, but barber example is a good way to express it in layman terms)

This conundrum may seem trivial, but some of the best minds of those times were grappling with it.

Stage 2-Hilbert’s escape plan: (more…)

Tags: Alan Turing, Bertrand Russel, Kurt Godel, Turing Machine, Von Neumann Architecture

If you are quite worried about the current financial meltdown, then think again. A much bigger danger is lurking round the corner, and the scariest thing is that when it comes, it will come all of a sudden, without a warning.

I began thinking about it when Grigory Perelman proved the “ Poincare Conjecture“. All of a sudden, without warning, without any incremental improvisations.Now, Poincare Conjecture is a 100 years old problem first proposed by Henri Poincare in 1904. It was considered as one of the most difficult open problems of mathematics. Almost all the brilliant mathematicians had tried their hands on it. And one day a scruffy looking Russian, who lived in poverty in a village in Russia just proved it.No warnings, no buzz. Just like that.

This is the nature of mathematics. Even though all the other sciences are done in collaboration and it is hard to do a lot until you keep your ears to the ground and are very familiar with what is going on in the scientific community, maths is a bit different. Although collaboration of some sort is necessary, maths is best done when you are just alone with yourself and having no authority except that of your own mind. And that is dangerous because then the changes are sudden, brought about by a single man whom you might not know at all.

This spells a huge risk for internet security. (more…)

Tags: Analytic, encryption, Grigori Perelman, internet security, Mathematics, Number Theory, Quantum computer, Riemann Hypothesis