Category: Finished

Findings: Pairs of people in all kinds of relationships tend to collocate, telecommunicate, and feel inclinations towards one and other. People will telecommunicate with and feel inclinations towards their mothers more than their significant others, and find themselves collocated with friends more often than with roommates.

Method: Collecting diaries from 54 dyads (pairs of people) containing times and frequencies of interaction.

Good For: If you are seeking to understand human relationships through a quantified set of interactions. Marketers like 1800Flowers catering to pair sets could adjust advertisements based on how we prioritize our relationships.

Findings: Participants in mentoring programs report increases in social capital with people with socio-economic differences, but most mentors and proteges are from similar socio-economic neighborhoods.

Methods: Surveying participants in mentoring programs in Santa Fe, New Mexico and cross-referencing US Census data on local demographics.

Good For: If you are considering participating in or starting a mentoring program and want to learn about perceived societal benefits.

Findings: People do not move out of Boston for the same reasons they move out of Detroit. When we look at migration in and out of cities, we can use smarter metrics to classify the economic health of a city.

Methods: Regresses a network of US CBSA to CBSA migration flows for more than 200 million people in Pennsylvania from 1990-2011.

Good for: If you are attempting to clarify and rehabilitate the image of a city, or plan how to increase population inflows. Housing developers may find value in predicting inflows/outflows of certain demographics.

Findings: The Butterfly Effect is measurable. There is a 14-point scale of how much impact a Location Based Social Network event has on the world. The lightest is one person speaking to another and the most significant is the migration of 7,000 people.

Methods: Presentation of a 14-tier scale for navigating spatial patterns, along with pectoral representations.

Good for: If you are interested in classifying the root causes of why people go places, ranging from the selection of a retirement community to travel of emigrants after an infestation.

Findings: Phone call friends use the city similarly, and you have a higher chance of running into a friend if you live in the suburbs.

Method: mapping ellipse-shaped polygons of where people make/receive calls in Jiamusi China, and those of his or her phone call friends.

Good for: if you have a geolocated social network and you want to learn more about who uses which parts of the city, and whether the city is set up for friendships. Hospitality focused companies could choose locations based on where interactions are most likely to happen.