Assortative Mixing in Networks

2002/05/20 by M. E. J. Newman · 6 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Stochastic processes and statistical mechanics #cond-mat.dis-nn

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.89.208701

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 208701 (2002) · 5 pages, 1 table, 1 figure

arxiv created 2002/05/20 · openalex publication_date 2002/10/28 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

A network is said to show assortative mixing if the nodes in the network that have many connections tend to be connected to other nodes with many connections. Here we measure mixing patterns in a variety of networks and find that social networks are mostly assortatively mixed, but that technological and biological networks tend to be disassortative. We propose a model of an assortatively mixed network, which we study both analytically and numerically. Within this model we find that networks percolate more easily if they are assortative and that they are also more robust to vertex removal.

Citations

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