redrum87
July 25th, 2006, 04:41 AM
Let's get geeky... :nerd:
This is slightly talk/random, but it deals with computational science so I thought I'd post it here.
In my efforts to understand the Internet and the web, life, social networks, and more, I've found that graph theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory) comes in handy. I've noticed over my few years on kirupa forums that there are some unanswered threads, short threads, medium threads, long threads, and ridiculously epic threads. I'm guessing that the topology of the forums, from the perspective of thread-length, is a small world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network) (as opposed to a social perspective, being that this isn't a social networking site and there isn't a "friends" feature, thus tracking who knows who would be very difficult).
My question to you all is, do you think that the length of threads follows a fat-tail distribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewness)? That is, are most threads unanswered or very short and rarely does a thread reach epic status? To put it another way, as the length of the thread increases, does the number of those threads in existence drop by a predicable factor? Or do you think the distribution of threads follows a bell curve (in which few threads are short, most threads are medium, and few threads are long)?
Why does this matter? It doesn't really in the context of discussion, other than fueling curiosity.
This is slightly talk/random, but it deals with computational science so I thought I'd post it here.
In my efforts to understand the Internet and the web, life, social networks, and more, I've found that graph theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory) comes in handy. I've noticed over my few years on kirupa forums that there are some unanswered threads, short threads, medium threads, long threads, and ridiculously epic threads. I'm guessing that the topology of the forums, from the perspective of thread-length, is a small world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network) (as opposed to a social perspective, being that this isn't a social networking site and there isn't a "friends" feature, thus tracking who knows who would be very difficult).
My question to you all is, do you think that the length of threads follows a fat-tail distribution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skewness)? That is, are most threads unanswered or very short and rarely does a thread reach epic status? To put it another way, as the length of the thread increases, does the number of those threads in existence drop by a predicable factor? Or do you think the distribution of threads follows a bell curve (in which few threads are short, most threads are medium, and few threads are long)?
Why does this matter? It doesn't really in the context of discussion, other than fueling curiosity.