Nicholas Christakis 1 : How social networks predict epidemics

TED 2010
Nicholas Christakis: How social networks predict epidemics (transcript)
Summary
We're embedded in the social networks. You form connections with your friends, your parents and others, those people have similar relationships with other people. It endlessly continues and affects your lives.
Understanding these networks well leads to knowing epidemics of something and being able to predict it. It might be able to be used to detect epidemics earlier than ever, and it'll be good to improve the world.
The social networks have a particular kind of structure. If someone both has six connections, but their positions in the network are different, all people occupy different locations within. And then, randomly chosen people have more connections, and more central the random people themselves. You can find the middle of the network from this way.
Thus, if you want to track something that was spreading through a network early, you would set up sensors and monitor in the middle of the network. If you want to stop spreading something like pathogen, you should focue this point, you'll stop it.
Nowadays, various kinds of data are collected and are often used, because this way produces more effect to achieve anything.
Words in this story
virtue  / behavior showing high moral standards.
pathogen / any small organism, such as a virus or a bacterium that can cause disease.
immunize /verb/ make (a person or animal) immune to infection, typically by inoculation. immunity /noun/   immune /adj/
velocity / the speed at which something is traveling
pharmaceuticals  /phar・ma・ceu・ti・cal/ fὰɚməsúːṭɪk(ə)l/ a compound manufactured for use as a medicinal drug.