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As a lay user creates an art piece using an interactive generative art tool, what, if anything, do the choices they make tell us about them and their preferences? These preferences could be in the specific generative art form (e.g., color…
Adaptive systems -- such as a biological organism gaining survival advantage, an autonomous robot executing a functional task, or a motor protein transporting intracellular nutrients -- must model the regularities and stochasticity in their…
Publication statistics are ubiquitous in the ratings of scientific achievement, with citation counts and paper tallies factoring into an individual's consideration for postdoctoral positions, junior faculty, tenure, and even visa status for…
It is part of our daily social-media experience that seemingly ordinary items (videos, news, publications, etc.) unexpectedly gain an enormous amount of attention. Here we investigate how unexpected these events are. We propose a method…
We design online algorithms for the fair allocation of public goods to a set of $N$ agents over a sequence of $T$ rounds and focus on improving their performance using predictions. In the basic model, a public good arrives in each round,…
Many complex phenomena, from the selection of traits in biological systems to hierarchy formation in social and economic entities, show signs of competition and heterogeneous performance in the temporal evolution of their components, which…
In all competitions where results are based upon an individual's performance the question of whether the outcome is a consequence of skill or luck arises. We explore this question through an analysis of a large dataset of approximately one…
We study the selection of agents based on mutual nominations, a theoretical problem with many applications from committee selection to AI alignment. As agents both select and are selected, they may be incentivized to misrepresent their true…
Estimating the capabilities, or inputs of production, that drive and constrain the economic development of urban areas has remained a challenging goal. We posit that capabilities are instantiated in the complexity and sophistication of…
The present study focuses on persistence in research productivity over the course of an individual's entire scientific career. We track 'late-career' scientists - scientists with at least 25 years of publishing experience (N=320,564) - in…
Predicting high-growth firms has attracted increasing interest from the technological forecasting and machine learning communities. Most existing studies primarily utilize financial data for these predictions. However, research suggests…
We have used agent-based modeling as our numerical method to artificially simulate a dynamic real economy where agents are rational maximizers of an objective function of Cobb-Douglas type. The economy is characterised by heterogeneous…
Citations acknowledge the impact a scientific publication has on subsequent work. At the same time, deciding how and when to cite a paper, is also heavily influenced by social factors. In this work, we conduct an empirical analysis based on…
The availability of massive data about sports activities offers nowadays the opportunity to quantify the relation between performance and success. In this study, we analyze more than 6,000 games and 10 million events in six European leagues…
Advertisements are unavoidable in modern society. Times Square is notorious for its incessant display of advertisements. Its popularity is worldwide and smaller cities possess miniature versions of the display, such as Pittsburgh and its…
From sports to science, the recent availability of large-scale data has allowed to gain insights on the drivers of human innovation and success in a variety of domains. Here we quantify human performance in the popular game of chess by…
The exponentially growing number of scientific papers stimulates a discussion on the interplay between quantity and quality in science. In particular, one may wonder which publication strategy may offer more chances of success: publishing…
Humans perform exquisite sensorimotor skills, both individually and in teams, from athletes performing rhythmic gymnastics to everyday tasks like carrying a cup of coffee. The "predictive brain" framework suggests that mastering these…
Human creativity is the ultimate driving force behind scientific progress. While the building blocks of innovations are often embodied in existing knowledge, it is creativity that blends seemingly disparate ideas. Existing studies have made…
A principal hires an agent to work on a long-term project that culminates in a breakthrough or a breakdown. At each time, the agent privately chooses to work or shirk. Working increases the arrival rate of breakthroughs and decreases the…