Information flow reveals prediction limits in online social activity

James P. Bagrow, Xipei Liu, Lewis Mitchell
Last modified: 2018-02-21

This README describes the data release for the above project. There are four CSV files associated with project. We describe these data below

The files:

twitter_data.csv

The text statistics, entropies and predictabilities for the $n = 927$ egos and their top-ranked alters. Fields:

1. ID1 - Hashed identifier for user 1 (ego)
2. ID2 - Hashed identifier for user 2 (alter)
3. H1 - Entropy of 1 (bits)
4. H2 - Entropy of 2 (bits)
5. Hx1G2 - Cross-entropy of 1 given 2 (bits)
6. Hx2G1 - Cross-entropy of 2 given 1 (bits)
7. N1m2 - Number of times 1 @-mentions 2
8. N2m1 - Number of times 2 @-mentions 1
9. R2b1 - Ranking of 2 by 1 (ie rank of mentions of 2 in 1's feed) (0 means no mentions)
10. R1b2 - Ranking of 1 by 2 (ie rank of mentions of 1 in 2's feed) (0 means no mentions)
11. N1 - Number of words from 1
12. N2 - Number of words from 2
13. Nuniq1 - Number of unique words from 1
14. Nuniq2 - Number of unique words from 2
15. Ntweets1 - Total number of tweets posted by 1
16. Nfriends1 - Number of distinct individual's @-mentioned by 1
17. Nmentions1 - Total number of @-mentions by 1
18. Ntweets2 - Total number of tweets posted by 2
19. Nfriends2 - Number of distinct individual's @-mentioned by 2
20. Nmentions2 - Total number of @-mentions by 2
21. KL12 - KL-divergence
22. KL21 - KL-divergence
23. Pi1 - Predictability of 1
24. Pi2 - Predictability of 2
25. Pix1G2 - "Cross-predictability" of 1 given 2
26. Pix2G1 - "Cross-predictability" of 2 given 1

cumulative_data_original.csv

Cumulative entropy and predictability for ego-alter pairs. Fields:

1. r - rank of alter
2. Hx - cross-entropy ego from rank-r alter
3. CHx - cumulative cross-entropy of ego from rank-1 through rank-r alters
4. CHxA - cumulative cross-entropy of ego from rank-1:-r alters and ego
5. PiEgoGalters - Predictability of ego given alters 1:r
6. PiEgoGaltersAndEgo - Predictability of ego given alters 1:r and ego

cumulative_data_timeControl.csv and cumulative_data_socialControl.csv

As per cumulative_data_origin.csv but for the temporal and social controls. respectively. Fields:

1. r - rank of this alter
2. Hx - Cross-entropy of ego given rank-r alter
3. CHx - Cumulative cross-entropy of ego given alters ranked 1:r
4. Ne - Number of words of ego
5. Ve - Number of unique words of ego
6. Na - Number of words of alter
7. Va - Number of unique words of alter
8. PiEgoGalter - Predictability of ego given rank-r alter
9. PiEgoGalters - Predictability of ego given alter ranked 1:r