William H. W. Thompson

selected publications

1. 

   Reconstructing Networks from Simple and Complex Contagions

   Nicholas W. Landry, William Thompson, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, and 1 more author

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   Network scientists often use complex dynamic processes to describe network contagions, but tools for fitting contagion models typically assume simple dynamics. Here, we address this gap by developing a nonparametric method to reconstruct a network and dynamics from a series of node states, using a model that breaks the dichotomy between simple pairwise and complex neighborhood-based contagions. We then show that a network is more easily reconstructed when observed through the lens of complex contagions if it is dense or the dynamic saturates, and that simple contagions are better otherwise.

   @article{Landry2024b,
     title = {Reconstructing Networks from Simple and Complex Contagions},
     author = {Landry, Nicholas W. and Thompson, William and Hébert-Dufresne, Laurent and Young, Jean-Gabriel},
     date = {2024-10-07},
     journaltitle = {Physical Review E},
     shortjournal = {Phys. Rev. E},
     volume = {110},
     number = {4},
     eprint = {2405.00129},
     eprinttype = {arXiv},
     eprintclass = {cs},
     pages = {L042301},
     issn = {2470-0045, 2470-0053},
     doi = {10.1103/PhysRevE.110.L042301},
     urldate = {2025-05-21},
     langid = {english},
     keywords = {Computer Science - Social and Information Networks,notion,Quantitative Biology - Populations and Evolution,Statistics - Machine Learning},
   }

2. 

   Levy Flights of the Collective Imagination

   William H. W. Thompson, Zachary Wojtowicz, and Simon DeDeo

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   We present a structured random-walk model that captures key aspects of how people communicate in groups. Our model takes the form of a correlated L\’{e}vy flight that quantifies the balance between focused discussion of an idea and long-distance leaps in semantic space. We apply our model to three cases of increasing structural complexity: philosophical texts by Aristotle, Hume, and Kant; four days of parliamentary debate during the French Revolution; and branching comment trees on the discussion website Reddit. In the philosophical and parliamentary cases, the model parameters that describe this balance converge under coarse-graining to limit regions that demonstrate the emergence of large-scale structure, a result which is robust to translation between languages. Meanwhile, we find that the political forum we consider on Reddit exhibits a debate-like pattern, while communities dedicated to the discussion of science and news show much less temporal order, and may make use of the emergent, tree-like topology of comment replies to structure their epistemic explorations. Our model allows us to quantify the ways in which social technologies such as parliamentary procedures and online commenting systems shape the joint exploration of ideas.

   @online{thompsonLevyFlightsCollective2018,
     title = {Levy {{Flights}} of the {{Collective Imagination}}},
     author = {Thompson, William H. W. and Wojtowicz, Zachary and DeDeo, Simon},
     date = {2018-12-10},
     eprint = {1812.04013},
     eprinttype = {arXiv},
     eprintclass = {nlin, physics:physics},
     doi = {10.48550/arXiv.1812.04013},
     urldate = {2022-12-24},
     pubstate = {prepublished},
     keywords = {Computer Science - Computation and Language,Computer Science - Social and Information Networks,Nonlinear Sciences - Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems,Physics - Physics and Society},
   }