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Where cooperation thrives

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2017-04-01 00:28:58 GMT+8
Large social networks foster connections by erasing national, geographic, and even linguistic barriers. But when it comes to fostering cooperation, global connectivity leaves something to be desired, new research says.

Working with colleagues at Emmanuel College, Harvard scientists have developed an algorithm that predicts whether a social structure is likely to favor cooperation, and the findings suggest that strong pairwise relationships — not loose networks scattered across the globe — are the most conducive to cooperation. The study is described in a March 29 paper in Nature.

“What we are able to do is calculate the critical benefit-to-cost ratio for cooperation to thrive on any fixed population structure,” said senior author Martin Nowak, a professor of mathematics and of biology and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. “And what we find is truly interesting. We can take any graph or social network, and if it has strong pairwise ties, that is what is most conducive for cooperation. This is a mathematical argument for stable families or for stable friendships.”
 

Mathematic Words Today

 

Partial differential equation

Partial differential equation

In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is a differential equation that contains unknown multivariable functions and their partial derivatives. (A special case are ordinary differential equations (ODEs), which deal with functions of a single variable and their derivatives.)

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Mathematic People Today

 

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Carl Friedrich Gauss

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, mechanics, electrostatics, astronomy, matrix theory, and optics.

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