Shared interest network dynamics

Abstract

We simulate the dynamics of network formation governed by shared interests through a book users in a library analogy. We bias the probability of borrowing to simulate the effect of seasonality in the shared interest of the users. We also introduce interest as a measure of a user's likelihood to borrow a book. We introduce popularity, defined as the number of borrowers of a particular book at a particular time to quantify shared interest between students. We find that the popularity of a book is seasonal according to the borrowing time limit. We also find that the mean popularity response is increasing or constant depending on the ratio of the number of available books to the number of students.