Title: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: Preferential Attachment-Type Network Models of the Internet
Speaker: Walter Willinger, AT&T Labs-Research
Date: Monday, September 17, 2007 12:00 - 1:30 pm
Location: DyDan Center, CoRE Bldg, Room 431, Rutgers University, Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ
Abstract:
I will discuss some of the main problems and challenges associated with measuring, inferring, and modeling various types of Internet-related connectivity structures. To this end, I will use some known examples to illustrate the need to (i) understand the process by which Internet connectivity measurements are obtained, (ii) explore the sensitivity of inferred graph properties to known ambiguities in the data, and (iii) to be more serious/ambitious when it comes to model validation. Ignoring any of these issues is bound to lead to specious models (e.g., preferential attachment-type graphs) and produce results that are best described by the well-known aphorism "lies, damned lies, and statistics".