Email Communication Model Combining Small-World and Scale-Free Characteristic

• Main Authors: Ching-Chang Lin, 林慶昌
• Other Authors: Yihjia Tsai
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/90107955932414822087

博士 === 淡江大學 === 資訊工程學系 === 92 === The small-world network model has been popular to describe a wide range of networks such as human social relations and networks formed by biological entities. The network model achieves a small diameter with relatively few links as measured by the ratio of clustering coefficient and the number of links. It is quite natural to consider email communication similar to social network patterns. Quite surprisingly, this thesis find from empirical study that email networks follow a different type of network model that falls into the category of scale-free network. This paper presents two network models that combine the clustering coefficient property of a small-world network and the degree distribution property of a scale-free network model. The proposed models offer a way to incorporate the social factor into the small-world and scale-free communication patterns. Simulation results of the proposed model closely match the empirical email network degree distribution and the clustering coefficients. Empirical data indicate that the property of email networks is more similar to the static model (base on small-world network) than the dynamic model (base on scale-free model).