2005/10/25 by Daniel B. Stouffer, Stouffer, Daniel B., R. Dean Malmgren +4
Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #Data Analysis #FOS: Physical sciences #Mental Health Research Topics #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an) #physics.comp-ph #physics.data-an #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0510216
This manuscript re-analizes data from Barabasi's paper in Nature, "The origins of bursts and heavy tails in human dynamics", but it should be clear that the same problems are to be found in physics/0510117 and the upcoming Nature advertised in Barabasi's web site concerning the correspondence of Einstein and Darwin
arxiv created 2005/10/25 · openalex publication_date 2005/10/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In a recent letter, Barabasi claims that the dynamics of a number of human activities are scale-free [1]. He specifically reports that the probability distribution of time intervals tau between consecutive e-mails sent by a single user and time delays for e-mail replies follow a power-law with an exponent -1, and proposes a priority-queuing process as an explanation of the bursty nature of human activity. Here, we quantitatively demonstrate that the reported power-law distributions are solely an artifact of the analysis of the empirical data and that the proposed model is not representative of e-mail communication patterns.