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1\documentclass{article}
2\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
3\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
4
5\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}
6\addbibresource{sources.bib}
7
8\title{FNS25 Research Plan}
9\author{Aiden Woodruff}
10
11\begin{document}
12\maketitle
13
14\section{Selected paper}
15
16The selected paper is ``Experimental evidence for tipping points in social
17convention'' by Centola et al. \cite{centola_experimental_2018}. The social
18science report is cited across disciplines from swarm robotics to virology.
19
20\subsection{Main topic}
21
22Centola et al. collect experimental evidence to support theoretical models of
23tipping points in social conventions. The prior work on critical mass as
24defined in game theory and observational studies suggest dedicated minorities
25of anywhere from 10-40\% of a population are large enough to effect changes in
26conventions. The authors vary the size of minority groups to determine the
27threshold past which dedicated actors are able to disrupt the convention in
28a name game.
29
30\subsection{Methods}
31
32The study engaged 194 online subjects in a game where pairs of players
33coordinate in naming a picture of a person for their own gain. Participants
34were randomly assigned to independent groups of variable size. Within those
35groups, members were matched pairwise for a number of rounds. Each round, pairs
36of players interacted each round to gain 10\textcent{} if their names matched
37or else lose 10\textcent.
38
39When a naming convention was reached, dedicated confederates were introduced
40which simultaneously chose the same alternative (chosen from common previous
41played names). The theoretical tipping point was 25\% of the population, and so
42committed minorities in the range of 15\% to 35\% were introduced across
43different trials.
44
45Centola et al then developed a model based on a simple sliding window of memory
46which was able to predict 80\% of experimental results. They used the model to
47increase population size further and find a more exact critical mass
48percentage.
49
50The model was implemented in R and provided as part of supplementary materials
51on GitHub.
52
53\subsection{Data}
54
55The details of each round were recorded, including: group sizes, round counts,
56all names assigned by players in each round, and confederate sizes and
57behaviors. Experimental data were used to tune the sliding window memory model.
58Then minority and group sizes, memory, network density, and strategy preference
59were varied to achieve more accurate values for the tipping point.
60
61\subsection{Results and conclusions}
62
63The tipping point was found to be around 25-31\% of the population empirically
64and more precisely around 24.3\% for the developed model. The results of
65Centola et al. align well with certain qualitative studies in organizational
66settings, which they suggest may be due to the rewards of following convention
67being clearly defined. When they adjusted agent strategy preferences, the
68tipping point remained below 50\%.
69
70They extend their discussion to understanding intentional pushes to change
71social opinion and naturally evolving acceptability of different social
72behaviors.
73
74Centola et al. provided an emperical value for tipping points which is widely
75cited. Their work also supports the idea that the tipping point is precise in
76a population \cite{babitz_how_2025}.
77
78\subsection{Evaluation}
79
80Centola et al. build on similar games and their disciplines own conventions to
81devise this study. Their results are not general to every social convention but
82still serve as empirical evidence for the critical mass phenomenon. The
83proposed model provides a method to explore other hypotheses. The raw data can
84also be used to develop and test other models. Since their own sliding window
85memory model only predicted 80\% of experimental subject choices (even with
86longer memories), there may well be a better model which can be tuned to their
87data.
88
89Even without the more precise threshold predicted by Centola et al.'s model,
90their experimental threshold is a nice result.
91
92\section{Experimental proposal}
93
94\subsection{Goal and novelty}
95
96My goal is to replicate the sliding window memory model used by Centola et al.
97and vary the strategy preference among certain members of the network. I am
98hoping to more accurately model real world networks in which certain actors
99have much a greater aversion to changing conventions than others. Additionally,
100I want to try specifically adjusting the influence (i.e. node degree) of those
101individuals.
102
103\subsection{Data}
104
105I plan to run experiments on actor networks of the same type as Centola et al.
106I will choose different independent variables and determine tipping points for
107each configuration.
108
109I will also explore for data from similar studies to compare my results to.
110
111\subsection{Methods}
112
113I plan to use SNAP \cite{leskovec2016snap} for network infrastructure and
114analysis. The code implemented by Centola et al. is written in R and seems to
115run slowly on my machine. The code is short (less than 200 lines overall) and
116so I plan to re-implement it in C++.
117
118The tipping points found by Centola et al. were robust to network density, so I
119will plan to study less dense networks. Depending on the trial, I will
120introduce influential nodes of high degree.
121
122Smaller network were more susceptible to dedicated minorities, and so I am also
123interested in how variable strategy preference will affect small networks like
124those in the experiments (\(\le 30\) participants).
125
126Additionally, if I have time I may try to construct a different model that can
127more accurately predict the experimental data from Centola et al. Then it will
128be worth repeating the same experiments to see how the results differ.
129
130\subsection{Result evaluation criteria}
131
132Statistical significance will be a necessary result for a successful study. My
133hypothesis is that influential conservative nodes will cause the tipping point
134to be higher in small networks but not as much in large networks.
135
136\printbibliography
137
138\end{document}
139