Researchers develop method to predict source of network diffusion
(Phys.org) -- In building network models, researchers have shown its possible to show how information moves from a source node to many and sometime all of the nodes in a network using available data and probability calculations. Not so easy is doing the reverse, i.e. finding the source after data has already diffused throughout a network. Building a model that could do so would have innumerable applications, ranging from tracing rumors on Twitter back to the original poster to discovering where an epidemic got its start. Now new research by a team at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland has shown that using techniques similar to triangulation methods that can locate an individual phone from cell towers, its possible to predict the source in a network using limited data sets. The team, led by Pedro Pinto, has published its findings in the journal Physical Review Letters.