Monday, March 18, 2024

What Happens in New York City Stays in New York City

I'm heading off to New York City for the first time in many years. I'll be giving a talk at Rockafeller University.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

"Complex Networks with Complex Weights"

The published version of one of my papers came out today. Its title is one of my favorites among all of the papers that I've ever written. Here are some details about the paper.

Title: Complex Networks with Complex Weights

Authors: Lucas Böttcher and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: In many studies, it is common to use binary (i.e., unweighted) edges to examine networks of entities that are either adjacent or not adjacent. Researchers have generalized such binary networks to incorporate edge weights, which allow one to encode node–node interactions with heterogeneous intensities or frequencies (e.g., in transportation networks, supply chains, and social networks). Most such studies have considered real-valued weights, despite the fact that networks with complex weights arise in fields as diverse as quantum information, quantum chemistry, electrodynamics, rheology, and machine learning. Many of the standard network-science approaches in the study of classical systems rely on the real-valued nature of edge weights, so it is necessary to generalize them if one seeks to use them to analyze networks with complex edge weights. In this paper, we examine how standard network-analysis methods fail to capture structural features of networks with complex edge weights. We then generalize several network measures to the complex domain and show that random-walk centralities provide a useful approach to examine node importances in networks with complex weights.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame!

Adrián Beltré, Todd Helton, and Joe Mauer have been elected to the Major Legaue Baseball Hall of Fame! I knew that Mauer would make the Hall of Fame eventually, but he far surpassed my prediction for how he was going to do this year. I am pleasantly surprised to see him make the Hall on the first ballot, as I thought that he would need to wait a year or two to be elected. Adrián Beltré obviously sailed into the Hall on the first ballot.

Billy Wagner, who was named on 73.8% of the ballots, missed election to the Hall by only 5 votes. He'll make it in 2025, which is his 10th and final year on the writers' ballot. Gary Sheffield was named on 63.9% of the ballots in his final year on the writers' ballot. His Hall case is now in the hands of the various small commitees, and I think (and hope) that he'll make it eventually. Andruw Jones had a small gain to 61.6% and Carlos Beltrán made a sizeable gain to 57.1%. Beltrán has an outside shot to be elected in 2025, but I think that 2026 is more likely. Andruw Jones could also ultimately make it through the writers' ballot, but I think that Beltrán will surpass Jones in the vote total in 2025. One way or another, they'll both eventually make the Hall of Fame. Chase Utley got 28.8% of the vote in his debut on the ballot. He did much better in the public ballots than in the private ones. I do think that Utley will eventually make it, but it's going to be a long road for the more sabermetrically-minded folks to convince others that Utley belongs in the Hall of Fame.

In December, a small committee elected former manager Jim Leyland to the Hall of Fame.

As usual, I have been following the ballot tracker very closely these past couple of months.

A discussion of a few ESPN.com writers of this year's biggest winners and biggest losers, as well as an outlook on the 2025 ballot.

Of the players who can debut on the writers' ballot in 2025, the only plausible Hall of Fame candidates are Ichiro Suzuki and C.C. Sabathia. Ichiro will sail into the Hall of Fame in his ballot debut (and hopefully he'll be elected unanimously, but I am not holding my breath). Sabathia will eventually make it, but I think that it's going to take a few years (say, 4 years).

Update (which I forgot to include in the original text of this post): My prediction for the 2025 balloting is that Ichiro Suzuki and Billy Wagner will be the two players elected. I think that Carlos Beltrán will get around 70% of the vote next year and that Andruw Jones will be in the mid 60s (perhaps around 66%). I think that Chase Utley will probably end up at about 35%. Utley's candidacy appears to be the latest battle in the considerations of old-school versus new-school voters.

Update: Jay Jaffe has written a rundown of the results of this year's writers' ballot.

Update (1/24/24): Here is Jay Jaffe's candidate-by-candidate dissection of this year's writers' ballot.

Update (1/29/24): Here is Jay Jaffe's five-year forecast of Hall of Fame balloting.

Thursday, January 04, 2024

"Learning Low-Rank Latent Mesoscale Structures in Networks"

One of my papers came out in final form today. Here are some details.

Title: Learning Low-Rank Latent Mesoscale Structures in Networks

Authors: Hanbaek Lyu, Yacoub H. Kureh, Joshua Vendrow, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: Researchers in many fields use networks to represent interactions between entities in complex systems. To study the large-scale behavior of complex systems, it is useful to examine mesoscale structures in networks as building blocks that influence such behavior. In this paper, we present an approach to describe low-rank mesoscale structures in networks. We find that many real-world networks possess a small set of latent motifs that effectively approximate most subgraphs at a fixed mesoscale. Such low-rank mesoscale structures allow one to reconstruct networks by approximating subgraphs of a network using combinations of latent motifs. Employing subgraph sampling and nonnegative matrix factorization enables the discovery of these latent motifs. The ability to encode and reconstruct networks using a small set of latent motifs has many applications in network analysis, including network comparison, network denoising, and edge inference.

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

Thursday, December 21, 2023

Dodgers Sign Pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto!

The Dodgers have signed star pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is joining the Majors from Japan. Now we have our ace starting pitcher!

This follows on our recent trade for pitcher Tyler Glasnow and our signing of free agent Shohei Ohtani.

What the Dodgers do is Moneyball with money.

Monday, December 18, 2023

"Human-Network Regions as Effective Geographic Units for Disease Mitigation"

Another of my papers just came out in final form. Here are some details.

Title: "Human-Network Regions as Effective Geographic Units for Disease Mitigation"

Authors: Clio Andris, Caglar Koylu, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: Susceptibility to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 depends on how those diseases spread. Many studies have examined the decrease in COVID-19 spread due to reduction in travel. However, less is known about how much functional geographic regions, which capture natural movements and social interactions, limit the spread of COVID-19. To determine boundaries between functional regions, we apply community-detection algorithms to large networks of mobility and social-media connections to construct geographic regions that reflect natural human movement and relationships at the county level in the coterminous United States. We measure COVID-19 case counts, case rates, and case-rate variations across adjacent counties and examine how often COVID-19 crosses the boundaries of these functional regions. We find that regions that we construct using GPS-trace networks and especially commute networks have the lowest COVID-19 case rates along the boundaries, so these regions may reflect natural partitions in COVID-19 transmission. Conversely, regions that we construct from geolocated Facebook friendships and Twitter connections yield less effective partitions. Our analysis reveals that regions that are derived from movement flows are more appropriate geographic units than states for making policy decisions about opening areas for activity, assessing vulnerability of populations, and allocating resources. Our insights are also relevant for policy decisions and public messaging in future emergency situations.