Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age et plus d'un million d'autres livres sont disponibles pour le Kindle d'Amazon. En savoir plus
Vous l'avez déjà ?
Repliez vers l'arrière Repliez vers l'avant
En savoir plus
Voir cette image

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (Anglais) Relié – 11 février 2003

Voir les 5 formats et éditions Masquer les autres formats et éditions
Prix Amazon Neuf à partir de Occasion à partir de
Format Kindle
"Veuillez réessayer"
"Veuillez réessayer"
EUR 21,97 EUR 2,62

Offres spéciales et liens associés

Descriptions du produit

Revue de presse

"The insights here are fairly mind-blowing" (Independent)

"Accessible and engaging" (Nature)

"A fascinating read" (Good Book Guide)

"Watts looks at the new science of connectivity studies in a new and informative way...he takes us on a fascinating tour of a newly emerging subject" (Focus)

"Watt's theory is exciting for various reasons, but particularly because it brings together ideas from mathematics, physics and the social science. Oh, and popular culture, of course" (Independent on Sunday) --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Présentation de l'éditeur

'Six degrees of separation' is a cliche, as is 'it's a small world', both cliches of the language and cliches of everyday experience. But it's also an intriguing idea with a long history and some surprising implications. We all live in tightly bonded social networks, yet linked to vast numbers of people more closely than we sometimes think. Scientists have begun to apply insights from the theoretical study of networks to understand forms as superficially different as social networks and electrical networks, computer networks and economic networks, and to show how common principles underlie them all.



Détails sur le produit

  • Relié: 368 pages
  • Editeur : W. W. Norton & Company (11 février 2003)
  • Langue : Anglais
  • ISBN-10: 0393041425
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393041422
  • Dimensions du produit: 16,4 x 3,1 x 24,2 cm
  • Classement des meilleures ventes d'Amazon: 1.170.234 en Livres anglais et étrangers (Voir les 100 premiers en Livres anglais et étrangers)

En savoir plus sur l'auteur


Dans ce livre (En savoir plus)
Première phrase
THE SUMMER OF 1996 WAS A SIZZLER. Lire la première page
En découvrir plus
Parcourir les pages échantillon
Rechercher dans ce livre:


Commentaires en ligne

4.0 étoiles sur 5
5 étoiles
4 étoiles
3 étoiles
2 étoiles
1 étoiles
Voir le commentaire client
Partagez votre opinion avec les autres clients

Commentaires client les plus utiles

Format: Broché
Le triomphe d''Internet a été l''occasion de nombreuses recherches sur les réseaux sociaux.
Ce livre montre comment des modélisations simples donnent une idée de mécanismes complexes. Par exemple comment l'homme communique, et arrive naturellement à se retrouver dans un monde surpeuplé. On y voit aussi apparaître les propriétés fascinantes des systèmes : plus un réseau est saturé d'informations, plus il multiplie les courts-circuits, et plus il devient résistant ; son point faible, ce qui lui permet de se transformer, se réduit alors à une maille bien cachée.
Mais faut-il prendre le modèle pour la réalité ? Duncan Watts semble ignorer que l'homme peut se mouvoir, communiquer, et qu'il n'y a pas que le lien qui compte, mais aussi les nœuds du réseau (les individus).
Un livre assez facile à lire pour celui qu'intéresse la question. L''auteur, qui ne doit pas avoir beaucoup plus de trente ans, y décrit sa marche irrésistible vers la gloire.

Commentaires client les plus utiles sur (beta) 45 commentaires
60 internautes sur 63 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile 
An entertaining and illuminating read! 19 mars 2003
Par Un client - Publié sur
Format: Relié
60 internautes sur 68 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile many degrees from Kevin Bacon? 9 mai 2003
Par Dr. Cathy Goodwin - Publié sur
Format: Relié
We're living in an increasingly connected world and this book will help us see and understand the connections more clearly. I think it's a must for anyone who wants to comprehend our world today.
30 internautes sur 33 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile 
Excellent for its audience 29 avril 2006
Par Michael Bishop - Publié sur
Format: Broché



His first foray in the social sciences was inspired by the "small world" phenomenon. When two people are surprised to learn they have mutual acquaintances, someone often says, "It's a small world." In 1967, social psychologist Stanley Milgram decided to investigate how small the world really is. He tasked randomly selected residents of Boston and Omaha with getting a letter to a stockbroker who lived in Massachusetts. The rule was, they could only send the letter to people they knew on a first name basis. Amazingly, the letters that reached their destination usually did it in just 6 steps. This finding was then misconstrued and became the urban legend that there are six degrees of separation between any two people. Despite the widespread interest in the small world phenomena, little progress was made understanding it over the next thirty years.

Watts got interested in this problem when he was a graduate student in theoretical and applied mechanics. He and his advisor, Steven Strogatz, had been trying to understand how crickets' chirping becomes synchronized without a conductor cricket. Watts surmised that the timing of a cricket's chirp must be influenced by where it is located and the other crickets it is listening to. The ability to synchronize may depend on the structure of this network of crickets. The relationship between network structure and network phenomena such as synchronicity suddenly seemed broadly important, and he was surprised to learn how little mathematical attention it had garnered. Recalling the idea of "six degrees of separation," Watts and Strogatz turned to social networks and set about building simple models. Where Milgram had asked, "How small is the world?" they were now asking, "What does it take to make a world small?" This reframing of the problem was fundamental to the contribution they were to make.

Watts and Strogatz settled on modeling just two facets of social networks. One was the "small world" aspect, quantified as average path length (the number of links required to connect two randomly chosen people). The second was clustering, the extent to which my friends overlap with my friends' friends. What makes small world networks surprising is that short path lengths and high clustering are inherently antagonistic. Paul Erd?s and Alfred R?nyi rigorously proved that path lengths are short in networks with no inclination towards increased clustering, a random graph in the parlance of mathematicians. At the opposite extreme, if everyone was friends with all of their friends' friends, short path lengths would be impossible (in fact social groups would be completely disconnected from each other). After countless computer simulations, Watts had two important results. The alpha model captured the small world balance of path length and clustering. The beta model showed that if a network was systematically clustered, to the point of fragmentation, just adding five random links (edges) halves the average path length. He then began acquiring and examining network data sets. Remarkably, Hollywood actor collaborations, the neurology of C. Elegans, the power grid of the Western United States, interlocking boards of directors and the world wide web are all small world networks.

Next Watts reviews the work by L?zl? Barab?si, a physicist at the University of Notre Dame. His major contribution is research on scale free networks. Sociologists have long been concerned with questions surrounding the number of connections (degree) people have. Barab?si realized the importance of the degree distribution in a network. The degree distribution of many networks is approximately Poisson but Barabasi showed that the degree distribution of other important networks follows the highly skewed power-law. The distribution of wealth and the size of cities both fit this model. Furthermore he showed that this distribution will follow if the future growth rate is linearly related to the present size. This has obvious implications for these two examples and calls to mind Merton's Matthew Effect.

Barab?si's book, Linked, is similar to Six Degrees in that is geared to the general public and reviews many of the most important advances in network scholarship. Do Watts and Barab?si overstate their case? Rather than get bogged down in the semantic debate that is likely to arise from the claim to a "new" science, we should appraise the value of this line of research. It clearly has potential but Watts himself sometimes alludes to the difficulties in achieving that potential. Watts' work is mostly theoretical. Six Degrees offers a thought provoking network perspective on many topics but little help harnessing the theory in empirical work. Appropriate data may be hard to come by. Perhaps Watts has provided ideas that creative empiricists will find ways to exploit, but there are methodological challenges that may prove to be stubborn.

Despite some important exceptions such as Granovetter's Strength of Weak Ties sociologists have tended to take one of two approaches. One was to focus on the relationship between social structure and network structure. The other was to view network ties as sources of information or influence. This means exploring the association between position in a network, and a node's identity or power. Watts is right to call attention to the fact that these approaches usually ignored dynamics: changes in the network structure (changes in network connections), and what individuals do on the network (search for information, spread rumors, make decisions). Network data that captures these dynamics may be harder to come by.

Furthermore, large detailed datasets may be limited by the computational power available. Even simple computer simulations can be very computationally demanding. Threshold models of decision making, discontinuous phase transitions and cascades - many of the fundamental concepts in the study of networks are nonlinear. Proving the existence of causal relationships is always a challenge but these complex systems make a hash of everything. The measured effect of an independent variable, on average or at the margin, tells us little about the importance of that variable.

Despite a reasonable display of humility and respect, Watts should be criticized for the sociology he leaves out. Neither space limitations, nor a rush to publication can justify the gaps in his otherwise helpful recommendations for further reading. For example, Blau, Burt, Coleman, Homans, Laumann, Marwell and Oliver are conspicuously absent from the list. Perhaps this observation should not be overanalyzed but it does brings us back to how Watts will be received by sociologists and what impact he and scholars outside the discipline will have on sociology. It is hard for this reviewer to understand how anyone who reads this book could come away uncertain of the value of mathematics for theory development as well as empirical analysis. Model building can simplify and clarify, enhancing our intuition. Watts would never argue that all sociologists should drop what they're doing and begin running computer simulations, just that we should be open to such approaches. As he points out, "For any complex system, there are many simple models we can invent to understand its behavior. The trick is to pick the right one. And that requires us to think carefully, to know something about the essence of the real thing." Sociologists know something about the real thing. That's why we can't leave all the modeling to physicists and economists.
14 internautes sur 15 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile 
Definitely a monumental work 19 mars 2003
Par J. Lin - Publié sur
Format: Relié
I completely disagree with one reviewer in his comments that the author of this book suffers from the self-importance exultance syndrom. Yes, we have all suffered from the annoyance "larger than life" figures that some authers try to impose on us while we have been looking the hidden beef. But, not in this case.
In fact, I feel the presentation is thoughtful and humble. Moreover, the writing is elegant, lucid and crisp. The book gives a clear picture of an imprtant emerging field, provides the background of where it came from, and give a vision of how it may evolve. I cannot but admire the creativity, diligence and the vision of the author.
Putting down the book, I can still hear the echo of the gasp the auther uttered, "How did we miss that?" How can this not be a good read?
69 internautes sur 86 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile 
A student's diary 4 septembre 2003
Par Mark Mills - Publié sur
Format: Relié
If you haven't read anything about networks and imagine setting out on an academic career, joining Duncan on his network adventure might be a great deal of fun. Duncan starts his book with his arrival at college and gives us a blow-by-blow recap of his ups and downs while enjoying a life in graduate school. You have to get past reviews, you have to get published, you have to find post-doc positions, you have to find people to co-author papers.
The goal of all this was a little hard to discern. Was he working towards a tenured position in a major university? Was he trying to solve a specific problem? Was he trying to teach us something about networks? We never find out. The story ends with a curiously brief and fuzzy recap of his latest work.
Well, that's how diaries generally end.
It's not my favorite kind of book. I am interested in network theory, not the outcome of a walk in the park with professor X. I didn't care if Barbasi published a solution before Duncan thought up the question.
At some levels, I simply disagreed with Duncan. He seems quite comfortable with 'Blank Slate' notions of human nature, which seems entirely silly to me. His focus on getting an idea published first depressed me. Stories about who is 'first' are important to sports fans, lawyers and professors. Sports fans simply enjoy the thrill of the race. Lawyers use a court to establish who is 'first' to steal the ideas of less legally minded inventors. Professors fight over who is first to win tenure and long sabbaticals. In the real world, most ideas get conjured up over and over, again. That's what happens in networks.
A much more complete and concise science of networks, see 'Netwar'. For a much better understanding of the linguistic difficulties, see 'Biographies of Scientific Objects'.

Rechercher des articles similaires par rubrique

