Small-worlds: A review of recent books
Small-worlds research and related fields study a set of network structures with well-defined properties. This new area has been gaining momentum lately. Theoretical studies have advanced our understanding of such networks while empirical studies have shown these networks to be ubiquitous in both nature and society. In particular, systems that appear to be well modeled by such networks include World Wide Web documents, Internet routers, the cellular metabolic network, ecological food webs, social networks, and many others. The two main structures being investigated are small-world networks and scale-free networks. Three recent books, including two just published this summer, describe the research being undertaken in this burgeoning field. We survey and review these books through a discussion of the field of small-worlds research with numerous examples and considerations of the future of the field. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
small-worlds scale-free networks power law clustering coefficient characteristic path length science of networks