Re: Re: Node Tension

[mojotoad]

Here's how I was picturing tension: Imagine an object floating free in space. Plus and minus votes represent the magnitude of force pulling on the object in opposite directions. Overwhelming agreement in one direction or the other will merely cause the object to accelerate through space in that direction, rather than threatening to pull the object apart. In this model, +95/-5 would have the same tension as a +5/-5 node, but would be moving much more swiftly through space.

Having said that, I agree that there's something that might be valuable to capture in the difference between the two examples. Perhaps tension isn't the right word?

Matt

[Biker]

Controversy?



---

Everything went worng, just as foreseen.

[Roy Johnson]

I get pleasing results with this formula:

sub tension {
  my ($hi, $lo) = @_;
  $lo or return 0;
  2 * log($lo)/log($hi + .1);
}

where $hi is the higher number of votes (whichever direction) and $lo is the number of votes in the other direction. Any result above 1 represents an interesting amount of tension, IMO. Here's a table of results:

Hi #	Lo #	Tension
3	3	1.9420
8	3	1.0504
8	8	1.9881
20	3	0.7322
20	8	1.3860
20	20	1.9967
50	3	0.5614
50	8	1.0626
50	20	1.5308
50	50	1.9990
90	3	0.4882
90	8	0.9240
90	20	1.3312
90	50	1.7383
90	90	1.9995

[mojotoad]

That looks pretty good, except it seems to lose the magnitude of the tension. 3 vs 3, 8 vs 8, 50 vs 50 all have similar results.

(of course that's probably just me visually eyeballing sig figs along a log curve...)

Cheers,
Matt

[Roy Johnson]

You're right. My notion was only to distinguish interesting from non-interesting. You regain the magnitude if you drop a log:
Read more... (769 Bytes)
I'd call < 1.3 low tension, 1.3-2 moderate, >2 strong.