Popular Science Lectures

Social networks are indispensible parts of our everyday lives. Each one of us belongs to certain (more often than not - multiple) social structures, engaging in interactions with other members of these groups. Being equipped with a set of initial beliefs and premises, each agent aims to complete the dynamic formation of both personal and the opinions of others, ideally reaching a consensus within the network.

The aim of this lecture is to familiarize the eager participants, on both simple and applied mathematics level, with the methods that the contemporary science applies in the analysis of these, usually very complex structures and interconnections occurring within them, while providing the answers to the following questions:

• What are social networks and how do they operate? • The role of social networks - historical throwback and novel circumstances • Social networks - mediums for learning and development • Influencer - follower relationships • Reaching a consensus - ‘buffet of opinions’ • Is there a recipe for ruling the world?

Let’s look into the mystical and dynamic world of everyday social phenomena and events, manage to comprehend the importance of their proper functioning, and thus, even slightly, begin to understand the ‘Matrix’ in which we exist, from a different perspective.

Speaker: Ernest Šanca, Department of Mathematics and Information Science, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia.