The Tipping Point

September 3, 2003

By Malcolm Gladwell, a fascinating look at the way ideas and social practices act like viruses, especially in the way little things can cause them to spread at inordinate speed.

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Comments

  1. Bob:

    William Safire of the NYTimes on “tipping”

  2. Bob:

    An article on the struggle to vaccinate for the flu argues that it is not vaccinating sheer numbers of people that matters; it is vaccinating “superspreaders”:

    Reuven Cohen of Bar-Ilan University in Israel and his colleagues propose a simple modification of random vaccination that is more effective, according to their computer simulations. The idea is to randomly choose, say, 20% of the individuals and ask them to name one acquaintance; then vaccinate those acquaintances. Potential super-spreaders have such a large number of acquaintances that they are very likely to be named at least once, the researchers found.

    Barabasi believes it could have vast significance in third-world countries, where “where there are not enough drugs to treat all who are at risk”. Africa and AIDS come to mind…

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