social networks

From social science to neuroscience, networks are everywhere! In this package we bring together our best content on network and graph theory for you to peruse.

Mathematical models predict how fast a rumour will spread and how many people it's likely to reach.

Mathematicians explore how opinions spread through a society.

How popular and successful are you? Not as much as your friends is the sad answer, at least as far as Twitter is concerned.

Everybody's talking about Big Data. But what exactly do they mean?

A project involving secondary school students has delivered valuable data for epidemiologists.

How a cute 18th century puzzle laid the foundations for one of the most modern areas of maths: network theory.

We like to think of the human brain as special, but as we reported on Plus last year, it has quite a lot in common with worm brains and even with high-performance information processing systems. But how does it compare to online social networks? In a recent lecture the psychiatrist Ed Bullmore put this question to the test.

Have you got as many friends as you think?
Why do the rich and popular get richer and more popular?
How rappers interact
Maths brings down the Mafia
  • Want facts and want them fast? Our Maths in a minute series explores key mathematical concepts in just a few words.

  • What do chocolate and mayonnaise have in common? It's maths! Find out how in this podcast featuring engineer Valerie Pinfield.

  • Is it possible to write unique music with the limited quantity of notes and chords available? We ask musician Oli Freke!

  • How can maths help to understand the Southern Ocean, a vital component of the Earth's climate system?

  • Was the mathematical modelling projecting the course of the pandemic too pessimistic, or were the projections justified? Matt Keeling tells our colleagues from SBIDER about the COVID models that fed into public policy.

  • PhD student Daniel Kreuter tells us about his work on the BloodCounts! project, which uses maths to make optimal use of the billions of blood tests performed every year around the globe.