Really interesting article in today’s SCIENCE magazine (click on the link above) by Kearns et al.
Money quote from the abstract:
“We studied networks of human subjects attempting to solve the graph or network coloring problem, which models settings in which it is desirable to distinguish one’s behavior from that of one’s network neighbors. Networks generated by preferential attachment made solving the coloring problem more difficult than did networks based on cyclical structures, and “small worlds” networks were easier still. We also showed that providing more information can have opposite effects on performance, depending on network structure.”
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 