Linked

Currently reading Linked, a book about networks, mainly an introduction to the work behind all that hoo-ha. Interesting and easy to read, and starting to provide some useful nuggets. Like this

The surprising discovery of power laws in the Web forced us to acknowledge the hubs. The slowly decaying power law distribution accomodates such highly linked anomalies in a natural way. It predicts that each scale-free network will have several large hubs that will fundamentally define the network's topology. The finding that most networks of conceptual importance, ranging from the World Wide Web to the network within the cell, are scale-free gave legitimacy to hubs. We would come to see that they determine the structural stability, dynamic behavious, robustness, and error and attack tolerance of real networks. They stand as proof of the highly important organising principles that govern network evolution.

(pp71-71)