ABSTRACT / Milgram’s widely discussed small-world experiment pointed to the interesting finding that our social network is navigable for human searchers that’s equipped with only the local knowledge of the network. Similar searching endeavors take place in the information space where the target is not a person but a piece of information. How do we navigate on a network of information such as Wikipedia? In this talk, Manran will present her findings from an online human experiment with 450+ participants. The players took a 60min long survey where they play a navigation game on Wikipedia (similar to the Wikigame) and answer some questions about their personalities, gender, cultural background, etc. Given the rich information of the players, Manran tried to find out why different players navigate differently.
BIO / Manran's main research interest is to apply statistical physics method to study social phenomena. Her previous research topics include: quantum random walks on the embedded hypercube, modern approaches to thermodynamics, agent based modelling of opinion dynamics on networks, cost model on multi-layer transportation networks.