The "Power of Few" Phenomenon: The Sparse Case

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tran, BaoLinh, Vu, Van
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Tran, BaoLinh
Vu, Van
author_facet Tran, BaoLinh
Vu, Van
contents The "majority dynamics" process on a social network begins with an initial phase, where the individuals are split into two competing parties, Red and Blue. Every day, everyone updates their affiliation to match the majority among those of their friends. While studying this process on Erdos-Renyi G(n, p) random graph (with constant density), the authors discovered the "Power of Few" phenomenon, showing that a very small advantage to one side already guarantees that everybody will unanimously join that side after just a few days with overwhelming probability. For example, when p = 1/2, then 10 extra members guarantee this unanimity with a 90% chance, regardless of the value of n. In this paper, we study this phenomenon for sparse random graphs. It is clear that below the connectivity threshold, the phenomenon ceases to hold, as the isolated vertices never change their colors. We show that it holds for every density above the threshold. To make the process more realistic, we also assume that individuals can randomly activate their accounts to post their opinions and observe their neighbors (just as we do on social media). We prove that the phenomenon is robust under this assumption.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2302_05605
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The "Power of Few" Phenomenon: The Sparse Case
Tran, BaoLinh
Vu, Van
Combinatorics
05C80 (Primary) 60C05 (Secondary)
The "majority dynamics" process on a social network begins with an initial phase, where the individuals are split into two competing parties, Red and Blue. Every day, everyone updates their affiliation to match the majority among those of their friends. While studying this process on Erdos-Renyi G(n, p) random graph (with constant density), the authors discovered the "Power of Few" phenomenon, showing that a very small advantage to one side already guarantees that everybody will unanimously join that side after just a few days with overwhelming probability. For example, when p = 1/2, then 10 extra members guarantee this unanimity with a 90% chance, regardless of the value of n. In this paper, we study this phenomenon for sparse random graphs. It is clear that below the connectivity threshold, the phenomenon ceases to hold, as the isolated vertices never change their colors. We show that it holds for every density above the threshold. To make the process more realistic, we also assume that individuals can randomly activate their accounts to post their opinions and observe their neighbors (just as we do on social media). We prove that the phenomenon is robust under this assumption.
title The "Power of Few" Phenomenon: The Sparse Case
topic Combinatorics
05C80 (Primary) 60C05 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.05605