A mathematical theory of communication

A mathematical theory of communication is a paper by Claude Shannon published in two part in July and October 1948. The paper posed the basis for the modern information theory and the basi elements of communication:

• An information source that produces a message
• A transmitter that operates on the message to create a signal which can be sent through a channel
• A channel, which is the medium over which the signal, carrying the information that composes the message, is sent
• A receiver, which transforms the signal back into the message intended for delivery
• A destination, which can be a person or a machine, for whom or which the message is intended

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Shannon, C. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication Bell System Technical Journal, 27 (3), 379-423 DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x (pdf)
Shannon, C. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication Bell System Technical Journal, 27 (4), 623-656 DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb00917.x (pdf)

The Marvel Universe as a real social network

Cover of the first number of Marvel Team-Up, comic book dedicated to the collaborations between Marvel heroes

We investigate the structure of the Marvel Universe collaboration network, where two Marvel characters are considered linked if they jointly appear in the same Marvel comic book. We show that this network is clearly not a random network, and that it has most, but not all, characteristics of "real-life" collaboration networks, such as movie actors or scientific collaboration networks. The study of this artificial universe that tries to look like a real one, helps to understand that there are underlying principles that make real-life networks have definite characteristics.

R. Alberich, J. Miro-Julia, & F. Rossello (2002). Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network arXiv arXiv: cond-mat/0202174v1