No Arabic abstract
During the last decades, quite a number of interacting particle systems have been introduced and studied in the border area of mathematics and statistical physics. Some of these can be seen as simplistic models for opinion formation processes in groups of interacting people. In the one introduced by Deffuant et al. agents, that are neighbors on a given network graph, randomly meet in pairs and approach a compromise if their current opinions do not differ by more than a given threshold value $theta$. We consider the two-sidedly infinite path $mathbb{Z}$ as underlying graph and extend former investigations to a setting in which opinions are given by probability distributions. Similar to what has been shown for finite-dimensional opinions, we observe a dichotomy in the long-term behavior of the model, but only if the initial narrow-mindedness of the agents is restricted.
When it comes to the mathematical modelling of social interaction patterns, a number of different models have emerged and been studied over the last decade, in which individuals randomly interact on the basis of an underlying graph structure and share their opinions. A prominent example of the so-called bounded confidence models is the one introduced by Deffuant et al.: Two neighboring individuals will only interact if their opinions do not differ by more than a given threshold $theta$. We consider this model on the line graph $mathbb{Z}$ and extend the results that have been achieved for the model with real-valued opinions by considering vector-valued opinions and general metrics measuring the distance between two opinion values. Just as in the univariate case, there exists a critical value for $theta$ at which a phase transition in the long-term behavior takes place.
We investigate a model for opinion dynamics, where individuals (modeled by vertices of a graph) hold certain abstract opinions. As time progresses, neighboring individuals interact with each other, and this interaction results in a realignment of opinions closer towards each other. This mechanism triggers formation of consensus among the individuals. Our main focus is on strong consensus (i.e. global agreement of all individuals) versus weak consensus (i.e. local agreement among neighbors). By extending a known model to a more general opinion space, which lacks a central opinion acting as a contraction point, we provide an example of an opinion formation process on the one-dimensional lattice with weak consensus but no strong consensus.
The Deffuant model is a spatial stochastic model for the dynamics of opinions in which individuals are located on a connected graph representing a social network and characterized by a number in the unit interval representing their opinion. The system evolves according to the following averaging procedure: pairs of neighbors interact independently at rate one if and only if the distance between their opinions does not exceed a certain confidence threshold, with each interaction resulting in the neighbors opinions getting closer to each other. All the mathematical results collected so far about this model assume that the individuals are located on the integers. In contrast, we study the more realistic case where the social network can be any finite connected graph. In addition, we extend the opinion space to any bounded convex subset of a normed vector space where the norm is used to measure the level of disagreement or distance between the opinions. Our main result gives a lower bound for the probability of consensus. Interestingly, our proof leads to a universal lower bound that depends on the confidence threshold, the opinion space~(convex subset and norm) and the initial distribution, but not on the size or the topology of the social network.
A version of the Schelling model on $mathbb{Z}$ is defined, where two types of agents are allocated on the sites. An agent prefers to be surrounded by other agents of its own type, and may choose to move if this is not the case. It then sends a request to an agent of opposite type chosen according to some given moving distribution and, if the move is beneficial for both agents, they swap location. We show that certain choices in the dynamics are crucial for the properties of the model. In particular, the model exhibits different asymptotic behavior depending on whether the moving distribution has bounded or unbounded support. Furthermore, the behavior changes if the agents are lazy in the sense that they only swap location if this strictly improves their situation. Generalizations to a version that includes multiple types are discussed. The work provides a rigorous analysis of so called Kawasaki dynamics on an infinite structure with local interactions.
A two-type version of the frog model on $mathbb{Z}^d$ is formulated, where active type $i$ particles move according to lazy random walks with probability $p_i$ of jumping in each time step ($i=1,2$). Each site is independently assigned a random number of particles. At time 0, the particles at the origin are activated and assigned type 1 and the particles at one other site are activated and assigned type 2, while all other particles are sleeping. When an active type $i$ particle moves to a new site, any sleeping particles there are activated and assigned type $i$, with an arbitrary tie-breaker deciding the type if the site is hit by particles of both types in the same time step. We show that the event $G_i$ that type $i$ activates infinitely many particles has positive probability for all $p_1,p_2in(0,1]$ ($i=1,2$). Furthermore, if $p_1=p_2$, then the types can coexist in the sense that $mathbb{P}(G_1cap G_2)>0$. We also formulate several open problems. For instance, we conjecture that, when the initial number of particles per site has a heavy tail, the types can coexist also when $p_1 eq p_2$.