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Editor Login


Convener in chief:


David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)

Editors:


Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)

Guy Stuart
(Economic Sociology, Finance)

Allan Friedman
(Simulations)

Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)

Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing)
Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Current Trends)

Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)

Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Citizen Relationship Management)

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« Digital Life and Design Conference 2007 | Main | Government Social Software - SNS in Japan Part III: Some observations »

19 January 2007

How can Scaling Laws become Actionable?

It is becoming increasingly difficult to get excited about yet another discovery of a universal scaling law...

I can see the appeal of 'pure' science to expand the boundaries of human knowledge; however, an equally noble goal is to tackle real problems facing humanity. While discovering that systems can be described as straight lines in log-log plots will always have it's place in the literature, there seems to be a scarcity of papers that actually apply these insights to real problems.

As an engineer, I'd like to understand if scaling laws can help better inform the design of systems. Are there any case studies where discoveries such as power-law scaling in nature have been acted upon in a way that has actually helped people? (Perhaps the hub models to understand disease dissemination may qualify?)

Posted by Nathan Eagle at January 19, 2007 2:08 AM