Hi Don,
Thanks for your message. Before you jump to the wrong conclusions, the
focus of that indicator hypothesis is *human behaviour data* not any kind of
data. The exact idea of 'human behaviour data' might need some increased
clarification but it seems to have proved practically useful enough so far.
An example, if you create a frequency plot of the suburbs of individuals
caught for graffiti and they are a rectangular distribution, or normal
distributions or follow white to pink noise distributions, then typically,
the behaviours do not depend on active interactions between people. Or the
interactions that were involved are very much in the past, learned and
embodied, as already locked-in characteristics .
In contrast, where patterns of human behaviours such as graffiti are
actively dependent on social interactions between individuals, then, from
experience, the frequency plots of the factors typically appear to follow
power law distributions. This makes reasonable sense in the physical realm
if you assign behavioural influences to social networks model and map
distribution of outcomes. It is particularly evident if you map the
socially-based outcome behaviours of agent-based models of human
socially-driven behaviours. Similar power law behaviour happens in fact to
most network effects that have interactions (including neuronal networks).
In physical networks such as the dynamics of molecular movement, the
physicality of the network interactions are forces between atomic elements.
The focus of the proposed indicator, however, is human behaviour data. For
human behaviour kind of situations, the physicality of the network
influences are *social interactions*.
None of the above is new knowledge.
The contribution of the Power Law Indicator hypothesis is to repurpose the
above knowledge into a design tool to help identify efficiently and with
low cost which classes of design solutions are likely to be most effective.
Another example, to create a social program intervention to encourage sport
uptake in teenagers do a frequency map of existing sport behaviour against
say schools or other factors. If the frequency map follows any distributions
other than a power law then I suggest this indicates other factors are at
play and the best design strategy is an intervention that targets issues or
individuals directly (e.g. offer additional sports facilities). In
contrast, if the frequency distribution follows a power law, then I suggest
this indicates social network effects dominate and hence the best design
approach in creating a social program intervention may be to target the
communication and social interaction issues (e.g. use advertising and public
relations methods).
Does this make better sense?
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Don Norman
Sent: Monday, 4 November 2013 8:04 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: On Power Laws as a test of social interactions
Terry
Sorry, but your observations about power laws makes no sense to me. Power
laws are ubiquitous in many domains. Nobody quite knows why, but these
domains include things where human interactions simply are irrelevant.
Love's Power Law Indicator Hypothesis for Social Systems:
> When human behaviour data exhibits the features of Power Law
> relationships, this indicates the behaviour is shaped by human
interactions.
(I once heard a violent argument between Herb Simon and Benoît Mandelbrot
over the derivation of Zipf's law, one of those pervasive power functions.
Neither argument had social implications -- it was pure mathematics.)
All sorts of weird things follow Zipf's law, including the length of words,
the sizes of cities. Loudness of a sound and brightness of a light follow
power laws, as do all psychological measurements of sensory phenomena that
derive from an additive physical stimulation. (Hue, location, and pitch are
substitutive dimensions, not additive ones, and they do not follow power
laws).
"Phase transitions in thermodynamic systems are associated with the
emergence of power-law distributions" ... "The ubiquity of power-law
relations in physics is partly due to dimensional constraints, while in
complex systems, power laws are often thought to be signatures of hierarchy
or of specific stochastic processes. A few notable examples of power laws
are the Gutenberg–Richter law for earthquake sizes, Pareto's law of income
distribution, structural self-similarity of fractals, and scaling laws in
biological systems. Research on the origins of power-law relations, and
efforts to observe and validate them in the real world, is an active topic
of research in many fields of science, including physics, computer science,
linguistics, geophysics, neuroscience, sociology, economics and more."
(from Wikipedia article on "Power Law".)
What leads to power laws? See Wikipedia. For example, in its article oj
Zipf's Law: "Wentian Li has shown that in a document in which each
character has been chosen randomly from a uniform distribution of all
letters (plus a space character), the "words" follow the general trend of
Zipf's law (appearing approximately linear on log-log plot)." Terry: where
is the social interaction in that random selection?
So, nice try Terry, but power laws are far too ubiquituous to he explained
by social facgtors. they appear to be the resut of statistical factors.
(Power law is often confused by those unfamilar with mathematics with
logaritms or with exponentials. (Logarithms are inverse eponetials.) Let
"^n" represent the exponent and let "a" and"b" be constants. An exponential
is y = a^.(Solving for x yields the logarihmic epression: x = a log y.) A
power function is of the form y = x^n. )
Don
========
On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 12:14 AM, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I've hypothesised a simple indicator that can be done by plotting and
> observing the shape of a couple of key behaviour variables. The test
> is whether they follow a power law.
>
...
Love's Power Law Indicator Hypothesis for Social Systems:
When human behaviour data exhibits the features of Power Law relationships,
this indicates the behaviour is shaped by human interactions.
--
Don Norman
Nielsen Norman Group, IDEO Fellow
[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
Book: "Design of Everyday Things: Revised and
Expanded<http://amzn.to/ZOMyys>"
(DOET2).
Course: Udacity On-Line course based on
DOET2<https://www.udacity.com/course/design101> (free).
Real Soon Now.
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