The Mathematics of Human Contact: Developing a Model for Social Interaction in School Children |
| S. Ashton, E. Scalas, N. Georgiou, I. Kiss
School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH, United Kingdom |
| Full Text PDF |
| In this paper, we provide a statistical analysis of high-resolution contact pattern data within primary and secondary schools as collected by the SocioPatterns collaboration. Students are graphically represented as nodes in a temporally evolving network, in which links represent proximity or interaction between students. This article focuses on link- and node-level statistics, such as the on- and off-durations of links as well as the activity potential of nodes and links. Parametric models are fitted to the on- and off-durations of links, inter-event times and node activity potentials and, based on these, we propose a number of theoretical models that are able to reproduce the collected data within varying levels of accuracy. By doing so, we aim to identify the minimal network-level properties that are needed to closely match the real-world data, with the aim of combining this contact pattern model with epidemic models in future work. |
DOI:10.12693/APhysPolA.133.1421 PACS numbers: 02.70.Uu, 87.10.Mn, 87.10.Rt, 87.23.Ge |