Fall 2007 Seminar Series

DATE: November 15
LOCATION: E40-298
TIME: 4:15pm
Reception immediately following in the ORC ConferenceRoom, E40-106

SPEAKER:
Matthew O. Jackson

TITLE
Naive Learning in Social Networks: Convergence, Influence, and the Wisdom of Crowds

ABSTRACT
We study learning and influence in a setting where agents communicate according to an arbitrary social network and naively update their beliefs by repeatedly taking weighted averages of their neighbors' opinions. A focus is on conditions under which beliefs of all agents in large societies converge to the truth, despite their naive updating. We provide general structural conditions on the social network that are sufficient for convergence to truth. In addition, we show how social influence changes when some agents redistribute their trust, and we provide a complete characterization of the social networks for which there is a convergence of beliefs and discuss results on the speed of convergence.