Implications of Perturbation Model on Human Behavior
June 4, 2013
There are many micro and macro level studies related to human mobility where micro-oriented studies focus on individuals’ daily commutes and macro-oriented studies concentrate on topics such as air-travel patterns to track epidemics over time. The article “People Organize Daily Travel Efficiently: Population-Level Study Discovers Small Scale Details About Individuals’ Choices” bridges the gap between these two types.
The study is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface and shows that people in Chicago and Paris make trips in addition to their primary commutes in a “consistent and expeditious” manner. What does this information look like in terms of quantifiable data? These people are using only 17 of more than 1 million possible trip sequences for up to five secondary locations.
According to the article:
“The most important aspect of the study, González says, is that because the 17 trip configurations hold true across the board, they represent “motifs” in network theory. Motifs are patterns that occur with such frequency that the statistical probability of their random occurrence is negligible. The motifs indicate that the study has uncovered a simple, basic principle that can be applied broadly in more complex models.”
The first author on this study calls the model the perturbation model and it appears that this suggests significant implications for predictions about human behavior. In some situations there are not so many choices it seems.
Megan Feil, June 04, 2013
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