Yanick Charette, “The friendship paradox can get you killed: The predictive value of network centrality”

Talk summary: The friendship paradox is a well-known mathematical feature of almost all networks: on average, your friends have more friends than you do. Yanick examines whether or not the properties of the friendship paradox might be leveraged to better understand—and potentially do something about—gunshot victimization. Using data on a large co-arrest network and all shooting victimizations from Chicago (2006-2013), there is strong evidence of the friendship paradox within the domain of gunshot victimization. In short, the paradox applies to gun violence similar to the ways observed in studies on flu transmission, academic publications, and twitter activity. Autoregressive time series models further suggest identifying high degree and low degree individuals in the network can better forecast subsequent increases in gun violence: the victimization of highly centralized individuals can better predict two-week surges in violence, while the number of individuals with low degree gave a 1 week ahead prediction. These results suggest that the centrality of the victims within the context of the friendship paradox could be used as censors for violence outbreaks and guide interventions.

The YINS Summer Seminar Series is designed for faculty, students and staff of the Yale Institute for Network Science, as well as for their collaborators and summer visitors, to exchange ideas with the rest of the YINS community in a supportive, encouraging environment that promotes learning, individual growth, and the highest standards of academic research. Bring your lunch, and join our community. The YINS Summer Seminar Series will take place on Wednesdays at noon on the 3rd floor of 17 Hillhouse Ave.