Albert-László Barabási, a renowned network scientist, discusses the hidden structures that connect our world. He reveals how complex systems, from the internet to social networks, follow a power law rather than random patterns. Barabási explains the concept of scale-free networks, emphasizing that new connections form around well-connected hubs. His insights shed light on how these interconnected systems impact everything from biology to society, helping us understand the intricate web of interactions shaping our lives.
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insights INSIGHT
Map Networks To Understand Complexity
Complex systems are everywhere because nearly everything we do is tagged by data and interactions.
Mapping a system's network architecture is the first step to understanding its complexity.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Erdős–Rényi Random Graph Story
Barabási describes the Hungarian school and the random graph model by Erdős and Rényi from 1959–1960.
Their model connects node pairs randomly by chance, forming what we call a random network.
insights INSIGHT
Random Models Fail To Capture Hubs
Random networks produce narrow Poisson-like degree distributions dominated by an average.
That predicted distribution doesn't match real systems where extremes and hubs exist.
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Our world is filled with an abundance of data. Albert-László Barabási, a network scientist, believes that understanding the underlying structure and relationships of complex systems is crucial. Barabási’s research has challenged the notion of random connections and led to the discovery of a more accurate representation of how these systems are organized.
Barabási’s exploration began with the vast internet. Surprisingly, he found that the intricate web of connections did not follow random patterns but instead followed a power load distribution. He named these networks “scale-free networks.”
Barabási’s groundbreaking work reveals that new connections in our networks tend to form with already well-connected elements. Scale-free networks exist in various complex systems, such as cellular interactions and social networks. This discovery is an important step toward comprehending the remarkable complexity that arises from countless interactions among the world’s many components.
0:00 Networks: How the world works
1:23 The theory of random graphs
3:15 What is network science?
6:49 Complex systems
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About Albert-László Barabási:
Albert-László Barabási is a network scientist, fascinated with a wide range of topics, from unveiling the structure of the brain and treating diseases using network medicine to the emergence of success in art and how science really works. His research has helped unveil the hidden order behind various complex systems using the quantitative tools of network science, a research field that he pioneered, and has led to the discovery of scale-free networks, helping explain the emergence of many natural, technological, and social networks.
Barabási is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is the author of The Formula (Little Brown), Network Science (Cambridge), Bursts (Dutton), and Linked (Penguin). He co-edited Network Medicine (Harvard, 2017) and The Structure and Dynamics of Networks (Princeton, 2005). His books have been translated into over twenty languages.
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