Scaling identity connects human mobility and social interactions
Abstract
Both our mobility and communication patterns obey spatial constraints: Most of the time, our trips or communications occur over a short distance, and occasionally, we take longer trips or call a friend who lives far away. These spatial dependencies, best described as power laws, play a consequential role in broad areas ranging from how an epidemic spreads to diffusion of ideas and information. Here we established the first formal link, to our knowledge, between mobility and communication patterns by deriving a scaling relationship connecting them. The uncovered scaling theory not only allows us to derive human movements from communication volumes, or vice versa, but it also documents a new degree of regularity that helps deepen our quantitative understanding of human behavior.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jun 06, 2016
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1525443113
Entities
People
- Albert-László Barabási
- Chaoming Song
- Dashun Wang
- Nathan Eagle
- Pierre Deville
- Vincent D. Blondel
Organizations
- Dana–Farber Cancer Institute
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency
- Harvard Medical School
- Northeastern University
- Pennsylvania State University
- UCLouvain
- United States Army Research Laboratory
- University of Miami