Networks Webinar - Evan Sadler
The Janeway Institute hosts the Networks Webinar Series which is organised by George Charlson, Sanjeev Goyal, Matt Elliott and Akhil Vohra.
On Friday 18th March 2022, 14.00 - 15.00, the speaker will be Evan Sadler (Columbia University) and he will talk about 'Seeding a Simple Contagion'.
Evan's research focuses on two main areas, the economics of networks and incentives within organizations.
See Evan's personal website for more information.
Paper: 'Seeding a Simple Contagion'
Abstract: This paper introduces a methodology for selecting seeds to maximize contagion using a coarse categorization of individuals. Within a large and flexible class of random graph models, I show how to compute a seed multiplier for each category---the average number of new infections a seed generates---and I propose randomly seeding the category with the highest multiplier. Relative to existing methods for targeted seeding, my approach requires far less computing power---the problem scales with the number of categories, not the number of individuals---and far less data---all we need are estimates for the first two moments of the degree distribution within each category and aggregated relational data on connections between individuals in different categories. I validate the methodology through simulations using real network data.