The Generation Mechanism of Degree Distribution with Power Exponent >2 and the Growth of Edges in Temporal Social Networks

Zhenpeng Li () and Luo Li ()
Additional contact information
Zhenpeng Li: School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Taizhou University, No. 1139 Shifu Avenue, Taizhou 318000, China
Luo Li: Lingnan (University) College, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China

Mathematics, 2023, vol. 11, issue 13, 1-11

Abstract: The structures of social networks with power laws have been widely investigated. People have a great interest in the scale-invariant generating mechanism. We address this problem by introducing a simple model, i.e., a heuristic probabilistic explanation for the occurrence of a power law. In particular, the proposed model can be used to explain the generative mechanism that leads to the scale-invariant of the degree distribution with a power exponent of τ > 2 . Furthermore, a stochastic model (the pure birth points process) is used to describe the cumulative growth trend of edges of a temporal social network. We applied our model to online temporal social networks and found that both the degree distribution scaling behaviors and the growth law of edges can be quantitatively reproduced. We gained further insight into the evolution nature of scale-invariant temporal social networks from the empirical observation that the power exponent τ gradually decreases and approaches 2 or less than 2 over evolutionary time.

Keywords: power law; generative mechanism; pure birth points process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/11/13/2882/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/11/13/2882/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:11:y:2023:i:13:p:2882-:d:1180599

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().