Related papers: Better be third then second in a search for a majo…
We study the process of opinion formation in an Ising social network of scientific collaborations. The network is undirected. An Ising spin is associated with each network node being oriented up (red) or down (blue). Certain nodes carry…
It is often necessary to make sampling-based statistical inference about many probability distributions in parallel. Given a finite computational resource, this article addresses how to optimally divide sampling effort between the samplers…
Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias that adversely affects management decisions, and mathematical modelling is an aid to its detailed understanding. Bias in opinion update about the value of a parameter is modelled here assuming that…
The traditional Sznajd model, as well as its Ochrombel simplification, for opinion spreading are modified to have a convincing strength proportional to a negative power of the spatial distance. We find the usual phase transition in the full…
In this paper, we propose a Boltzmann-type kinetic description of opinion formation on social networks, which takes into account a general connectivity distribution of the individuals. We consider opinion exchange processes inspired by the…
Online discussion threads are important means for individual decision-making and for aggregating collective judgments, e.g. the `wisdom of crowds'. Empirical investigations of the wisdom of crowds are currently ambivalent about the role…
Non-linear voter models assume that the opinion of an agent depends on the opinions of its neighbors in a non-linear manner. This allows for voting rules different from majority voting. While the linear voter model is known to reach…
We introduce a contrarian opinion (CO) model in which a fraction p of contrarians within a group holds a strong opinion opposite to the opinion held by the rest of the group. At the initial stage, stable clusters of two opinions, A and B…
The simulations in this paper are based on the theory of opinion dynamics, which incorporates both Opinion A and Opinion B, a case that is the inverse of Opinion A, in human relationships. It was confirmed that aspects of consensus building…
This work consists of an epidemic model with vaccination coupled with an opinion dynamics. Our objective was to study how disease risk perception can influence opinions about vaccination and therefore the spreading of the disease.…
The standard three-state voter model is enlarged by including the outside pressure favouring one of the three choices and by adding some biased internal random noise. The Monte Carlo simulations are motivated by states with the population…
The statistical properties of pairwise majority voting over S alternatives is analyzed in an infinite random population. We first compute the probability that the majority is transitive (i.e. that if it prefers A to B to C, then it prefers…
Pull voting is a classic method to reach consensus among $n$ vertices with differing opinions in a distributed network: each vertex at each step takes on the opinion of a random neighbour. This method, however, suffers from two drawbacks.…
We present the first nearly-optimal bounds on the consensus time for the well-known synchronous consensus dynamics, specifically 3-Majority and 2-Choices, for an arbitrary number of opinions. In synchronous consensus dynamics, we consider…
A project (e.g., writing a collaborative research paper) is often a group effort. At the end, each contributor identifies their contribution, often verbally. The reward, however, is very frequently financial. It leads to the question of…
In this study, I present a theoretical social learning model to investigate how confirmation bias affects opinions when agents exchange information over a social network. Hence, besides exchanging opinions with friends, agents observe a…
Collective decision-making is a process by which a group of individuals determines a shared outcome that shapes societal dynamics; from innovation diffusion to organizational choices. A common approach to model these processes is using…
We study a model of consensus decision making, in which a finite group of Bayesian agents has to choose between one of two courses of action. Each member of the group has a private and independent signal at his or her disposal, giving some…
Estimating the unknown density from which a given independent sample originates is more difficult than estimating the mean, in the sense that for the best popular non-parametric density estimators, the mean integrated square error converges…
We present a renormalization approach to solve the Sznajd opinion formation model on complex networks. For the case of two opinions, we present an expression of the probability of reaching consensus for a given opinion as a function of the…