dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaComment on Barabasi, Nature 435, 207 (2005)
| Authors | Daniel B. Stouffer, R. Dean Malmgren, Luis A. N. Amaral |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0510216 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510216 |
Abstract
In a recent letter, Barabasi claims that the dynamics of a number of human activities are scale-free [1]. He specifically reports that the probability distribution of time intervals tau between consecutive e-mails sent by a single user and time delays for e-mail replies follow a power-law with an exponent -1, and proposes a priority-queuing process as an explanation of the bursty nature of human activity. Here, we quantitatively demonstrate that the reported power-law distributions are solely an artifact of the analysis of the empirical data and that the proposed model is not representative of e-mail communication patterns.
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"abstract": "In a recent letter, Barabasi claims that the dynamics of a number of human\nactivities are scale-free [1]. He specifically reports that the probability\ndistribution of time intervals tau between consecutive e-mails sent by a single\nuser and time delays for e-mail replies follow a power-law with an exponent -1,\nand proposes a priority-queuing process as an explanation of the bursty nature\nof human activity. Here, we quantitatively demonstrate that the reported\npower-law distributions are solely an artifact of the analysis of the empirical\ndata and that the proposed model is not representative of e-mail communication\npatterns.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0510216",
"authors": [
"Daniel B. Stouffer",
"R. Dean Malmgren",
"Luis A. N. Amaral"
],
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"title": "Comment on Barabasi, Nature 435, 207 (2005)",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510216"
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