Mobility in an online world

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Team

Michael Szell, Giovanni Petri, Kang Zhao, Drew Levin

Intro

Universe

The topology of this online world can be expressed as a network, where sectors are nodes (placed on a cartesian grid) and wormholes are links between nearby sectors. A second type of link, the X-hole, links distant sectors, thus giving the universe a small-world property. Players live and move in this environment. For a fixed time for each day and each of the 10^4-10^5 players, we know their locations. (All data is fully anonymized!)

Tasks

• Extract data of universe
• Bring topology data in network format (adjacency list / sparse matrix)
• Visualize network, e.g. in PAJEK, G-PHI
• Extract mobility data of players
• Bring them in reasonable format (time-series). E.g. Time-series of daily hops.
• Analyze data
• Visualize time-evolving data (over the whole time-span: 1. display locations of 5 typical player, 2. display locations of 100 players in war)
• Formulate research questions
• Find literature on mobility, etc.
• Write paper (tex)

Data -> Calculations/Measures

• Time-series of distances travelled (over a time-span) -> Spatial entropy, COV matrix
• Number of unique places visited (over a time-span)
• Time-series of changed friends/enemies -> Social entropy

Research Questions

• How is spatial/social entropy distributed? Do we see modes? If so, why?
• Does mobility change in times of war?
• Do locations and friends/enemies correlate? If so, is there causality?
• ...

Meetings

• Thursday, June 10, 5 PM, lecture room
• Sunday, June 13, 8:30 PM, cafeteria (next to bookshop)