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arXiv · 2008.02885

A general solution to the preferential selection model

Jake Ryland Williams·Diana Solano-Oropeza·Jacob R. Hunsberger
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Abstract

We provide a general analytic solution to Herbert Simon's 1955 model for time-evolving novelty functions. This has far-reaching consequences: Simon's is a pre-cursor model for Barabasi's 1999 preferential attachment model for growing social networks, and our general abstraction of it more considers attachment to be a form of link selection. We show that any system which can be modeled as instances of types---i.e., occurrence data (frequencies)---can be generatively modeled (and simulated) from a distributional perspective with an exceptionally high-degree of accuracy.

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Jake Ryland Williams, Diana Solano-Oropeza, Jacob R. Hunsberger. 2020-08-06. A general solution to the preferential selection model. https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02885

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