[Colloq] Thesis Defense: Nicholas Blumm on Monday April 2nd at 1:30pm

[Nicole Bekerian]

The College of Computer and Information Science presents a PhD thesis defense

Speaker: Nicholas Blumm

Date: Monday April 2nd, 2012
Time: 1:30pm
Location: Center for Complex Network Research, Dana Building, 5th Floor

Title:
Quantifying the Dynamics of Ranked Systems

Abstract:
We use the concepts of 'volatility' and 'spacing' to quantify the dynamics of a wide class of ranked systems. The systems we consider are any set of items, each with an associated score that may change over time. We define volatility as the standard deviation of the score of an item. We define spacing as the distance in score from one item to its neighbor. From these two concepts we construct a model using stochastic differential equations. We measure the model parameters in a variety of ranked systems and use the model to reproduce the salient features observed in the data. We continue by constructing a spacing-volatility diagram that summarizes three unique stability phases and overlay each dataset on this diagram. We end by discussing limitations and extensions to such a model.


Committee:
* Albert-László Barabási (advisor)
* Javed Aslam
* Alan Mislove
* Zoltán Toroczkai (external)


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Best, 
Nicole 

______________________________________________________________ 

Nicole Bekerian 
Administrative Assistant 

Northeastern University 
College of Computer and Information Science 
360 Huntington Ave. 
202 West Village H 
Boston, MA 02115 

Phone: 617.373.2462 
Fax: 617.373.5121