arXiv subjects

Manran Zhu

Publications and source records attributed to Manran Zhu.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Milgram's experiment in the knowledge space: Individual navigation strategies

Data deluge characteristic for our times has led to information overload, posing a significant challenge to effectively finding our way through the digital landscape. Addressing this issue requires an in-depth understanding of how we navigate through the abundance of information. Previous research has discovered multiple patterns in how individuals navigate in the geographic, social, and information spaces, yet individual differences in strategies for navigation in the knowledge space has remained largely unexplored. To bridge the gap, we conducted an online experiment where participants played a navigation game on Wikipedia and completed questionnaires about their personal information. Utilizing the hierarchical structure of the English Wikipedia and a graph embedding trained on it, we identified two navigation strategies and found that there are significant individual differences in the choices of them. Older, white and female participants tend to adopt a proximity-driven strategy, while younger participants prefer a hub-driven strategy. Our study connects social navigation to knowledge navigation: individuals' differing tendencies to use geographical and occupational information about the target person to navigate in the social space can be understood as different choices between the hub-driven and proximity-driven strategies in the knowledge space.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2023

On graphs without cycles of length 0 modulo 4

Bollob\'as proved that for every $k$ and $\ell$ such that $k\mathbb{Z}+\ell$ contains an even number, an $n$-vertex graph containing no cycle of length $\ell \bmod k$ can contain at most a linear number of edges. The precise (or asymptotic) value of the maximum number of edges in such a graph is known for very few pairs $\ell$ and $k$. In this work we precisely determine the maximum number of edges in a graph containing no cycle of length $0 \bmod 4$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2023

Individual differences in knowledge network navigation

With the rapid accumulation of online information, efficient web navigation has grown vital yet challenging. To create an easily navigable cyberspace catering to diverse demographics, understanding how people navigate differently is paramount. While previous research has unveiled individual differences in spatial navigation, such differences in knowledge space navigation remain sparse. To bridge this gap, we conducted an online experiment where participants played a navigation game on Wikipedia and completed personal information questionnaires. Our analysis shows that age negatively affects knowledge space navigation performance, while multilingualism enhances it. Under time pressure, participants' performance improves across trials and males outperform females, an effect not observed in games without time pressure. In our experiment, successful route-finding is usually not related to abilities of innovative exploration of routes. Our results underline the importance of age, multilingualism and time constraint in the knowledge space navigation.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2013

Quantum walks on embedded hypercubes

It has been proved by Kempe that discrete quantum walks on the hypercube (HC) hit exponentially faster than the classical analog. The same was also observed numerically by Krovi and Brun for a slightly different property, namely, the expected hitting time. Yet, to what extent this striking result survives in more general graphs, is to date an open question. Here we tackle this question by studying the expected hitting time for quantum walks on HCs that are embedded into larger symmetric structures. By performing numerical simulations of the discrete quantum walk and deriving a general expression for the classical hitting time, we observe an exponentially increasing gap between the expected classical and quantum hitting times, not only for walks on the bare HC, but also for a large family of embedded HCs. This suggests that the quantum speedup is stable with respect to such embeddings.

quant-ph↗