Human Behavior is Low Dimensional

When

13/02/2019    
2:00 pm
Professor Mark Crovella

Where

LINCS / EIT Digital
23 avenue d'Italie, 75013 Paris

Event Type

Every person is unique and complex.   But can we predict anything about how large groups of people will behave?  In the 1950s the writer Isaac Asimov imagined a field called “Psychohistory” that could mathematically describe the actions of large groups.   I will argue that in a certain way, aspects of that vision are in wide use today.  To illustrate, I will describe examples from my own work in which the “low dimensionality” of aggregate human behavior gives us leverage on a range of problems, from predicting network traffic to detecting anomalous or malicious behavior in social networks.