The pattern is there, but can you see it? In examining the World Wide Web, physicist Albert-László Barabási posed this very question. In so doing, he discovered that the Web is less random than he, or anyone else, ever expected. In fact, there is a remarkable degree of similarity in the way components are connected, be they computers on the Web, neurons in our brains, members in a group of friends, or even words in a text. Only now are scientists beginning to identify these so-called ‘complex networks.'

‘Caught in your own web' provides a first glimpse into the new and fascinating field of complex networks. Over the course of a single afternoon, participants will be exposed to a multilayered perspective on complex networks from disciplines spanning from computer science to neurology and text analysis to sociology. A brief experiment, at the hand of electronic badges, will illustrate how social networks can be revealed. By the symposium's end, participants will be better suited to explore how they too can disentangle the webs of their own making.

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