Hi everyone!

This week at the Applied Statistics Workshop we will be welcoming Nicole Immorlica, Researcher in the Microsoft Research New England Theory Group, where she studies algorithmic game theory. She will be presenting work entitled The Degree of Segregation in Social Networks.  Please find the abstract below and on the website.

As usual, we will meet in CGIS Knafel Room 354 from noon to 1:30pm, and lunch will be provided.  See you all there! To view previous Applied Statistics presentations, please visit the website.

-- Aaron Kaufman

Title: The Degree of Segregation in Social Networks

In 1969, economist Thomas Schelling introduced a landmark model of racial segregation in which individuals choose residences based on the racial composition of the corresponding neighborhoods. Simple simulations of Schelling's model suggest this local behavior can cause segregation even for racially tolerant individuals. In this talk, we provide rigorous analyses of the degree of segregation in Schelling's model on one-dimensional and two-dimensional lattices. We see that if agents refuse to live in neighborhood in which their type constitutes a strict minority, then the outcome is nearly integrated: the average size of an ethnically-homogeneous region is independent of the size of the society and only polynomial in the size of the neighborhood. A natural question arises regarding how tolerance impacts segregation. We show the surprising result that tolerance can actually increase segregation: the average size of an ethnically-homogeneous region is now exponential in the size of the neighborhood.