2,388 research outputs found
Order preservation in a generalized version of Krause's opinion dynamics model
Krause's model of opinion dynamics has recently been the object of several
studies, partly because it is one of the simplest multi-agent systems involving
position-dependent changing topologies. In this model, agents have an opinion
represented by a real number and they update it by averaging those agent
opinions distant from their opinion by less than a certain interaction radius.
Some results obtained on this model rely on the fact that the opinion orders
remain unchanged under iteration, a property that is consistent with the
intuition in models with simultaneous updating on a fully connected
communication topology. Several variations of this model have been proposed. We
show that some natural variations are not order preserving and therefore cause
potential problems with the theoretical analysis and the consistence with the
intuition. We consider a generic version of Krause's model parameterized by an
influence function that encapsulates most of the variations proposed in the
literature. We then derive a necessary and sufficient condition on this
function for the opinion order to be preserved.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 13 eps file
On symmetric continuum opinion dynamics
This paper investigates the asymptotic behavior of some common opinion
dynamic models in a continuum of agents. We show that as long as the
interactions among the agents are symmetric, the distribution of the agents'
opinion converges. We also investigate whether convergence occurs in a stronger
sense than merely in distribution, namely, whether the opinion of almost every
agent converges. We show that while this is not the case in general, it becomes
true under plausible assumptions on inter-agent interactions, namely that
agents with similar opinions exert a non-negligible pull on each other, or that
the interactions are entirely determined by their opinions via a smooth
function.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figures, 3 file
Push sum with transmission failures
The push-sum algorithm allows distributed computing of the average on a
directed graph, and is particularly relevant when one is restricted to one-way
and/or asynchronous communications. We investigate its behavior in the presence
of unreliable communication channels where messages can be lost. We show that
exponential convergence still holds and deduce fundamental properties that
implicitly describe the distribution of the final value obtained. We analyze
the error of the final common value we get for the essential case of two nodes,
both theoretically and numerically. We provide performance comparison with a
standard consensus algorithm
Continuous-Time Consensus under Non-Instantaneous Reciprocity
We consider continuous-time consensus systems whose interactions satisfy a
form or reciprocity that is not instantaneous, but happens over time. We show
that these systems have certain desirable properties: They always converge
independently of the specific interactions taking place and there exist simple
conditions on the interactions for two agents to converge to the same value.
This was until now only known for systems with instantaneous reciprocity. These
result are of particular relevance when analyzing systems where interactions
are a priori unknown, being for example endogenously determined or random. We
apply our results to an instance of such systems.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
On the mean square error of randomized averaging algorithms
This paper regards randomized discrete-time consensus systems that preserve
the average "on average". As a main result, we provide an upper bound on the
mean square deviation of the consensus value from the initial average. Then, we
apply our result to systems where few or weakly correlated interactions take
place: these assumptions cover several algorithms proposed in the literature.
For such systems we show that, when the network size grows, the deviation tends
to zero, and the speed of this decay is not slower than the inverse of the
size. Our results are based on a new approach, which is unrelated to the
convergence properties of the system.Comment: 11 pages. to appear as a journal publicatio
Incompatibility boundaries for properties of community partitions
We prove the incompatibility of certain desirable properties of community
partition quality functions. Our results generalize the impossibility result of
[Kleinberg 2003] by considering sets of weaker properties. In particular, we
use an alternative notion to solve the central issue of the consistency
property. (The latter means that modifying the graph in a way consistent with a
partition should not have counterintuitive effects). Our results clearly show
that community partition methods should not be expected to perfectly satisfy
all ideally desired properties.
We then proceed to show that this incompatibility no longer holds when
slightly relaxed versions of the properties are considered, and we provide in
fact examples of simple quality functions satisfying these relaxed properties.
An experimental study of these quality functions shows a behavior comparable to
established methods in some situations, but more debatable results in others.
This suggests that defining a notion of good partition in communities probably
requires imposing additional properties.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure
Tight Bounds for Consensus Systems Convergence
We analyze the asymptotic convergence of all infinite products of matrices
taken in a given finite set, by looking only at finite or periodic products. It
is known that when the matrices of the set have a common nonincreasing
polyhedral norm, all infinite products converge to zero if and only if all
infinite periodic products with period smaller than a certain value converge to
zero, and bounds exist on that value.
We provide a stronger bound holding for both polyhedral norms and polyhedral
seminorms. In the latter case, the matrix products do not necessarily converge
to 0, but all trajectories of the associated system converge to a common
invariant space. We prove our bound to be tight, in the sense that for any
polyhedral seminorm, there is a set of matrices such that not all infinite
products converge, but every periodic product with period smaller than our
bound does converge.
Our technique is based on an analysis of the combinatorial structure of the
face lattice of the unit ball of the nonincreasing seminorm. The bound we
obtain is equal to half the size of the largest antichain in this lattice.
Explicitly evaluating this quantity may be challenging in some cases. We
therefore link our problem with the Sperner property: the property that, for
some graded posets, -- in this case the face lattice of the unit ball -- the
size of the largest antichain is equal to the size of the largest rank level.
We show that some sets of matrices with invariant polyhedral seminorms lead
to posets that do not have that Sperner property. However, this property holds
for the polyhedron obtained when treating sets of stochastic matrices, and our
bound can then be easily evaluated in that case. In particular, we show that
for the dimension of the space , our bound is smaller than the
previously known bound by a multiplicative factor of
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