DIEP seminar by Dr Martijn Gösgens
Dr Martijn Gösgens will investigate a model of opinion dynamics where vertices asynchronously announce opinions based on their private opinion and on the previously announced opinions of their neighbors. The focus is on understanding how the structure of the underlying graph influences the likelihood of reaching consensus on the true opinion. Previous work proved that for sufficiently sparse, connected expander graphs, this process terminates in consensus on the true opinion with high probability. In this work, there will be shown that when the underlying graph has geometric structure, the process is likely to terminate in disconsensus. Specifically, it willbe proven that for a one-dimensional Random Geometric Graph (RGG) of n vertices with expected degree o(√n), the process ends in disconsensus with high probability. Numerical experiments indicate that this phenomenon persists in higher-dimensional RGGs. Instead of a global consensus, there can be observed that the geometry leads to local consensuses. For dense RGGs, it will be proven that the process has a non-vanishing probability of ending in consensus on the false opinion.
If you wish to attend this seminar online, please send an email to r.lier@uva.nl to receive the zoom-link.