The Applet

The java applet below visualizes the Voter Model dynamics over a variety of complex networks. The applet allows the creation of regular square lattices, where each node is connected to its four first neighbours, Érdös-Reny networks for any given number of nodes and links, degree-one and degree-two Bárabási-Albert networks and Watts-Strogatz "Small World" networks.

At the left of the applet there are the controls to generate a network, right under the main applet window there are controls to run the voter dynamics, which are shared by all networks. The right side is devoted to output results.

Among the output monitors, there are two plots, which will show the network degree distribution, both in regular and logarithmic scale. This plots will show after opinions are distributed, or along the creation of the Bárabási-Albert if plot is enabled.

In this applet colours represent opinions, and a maximum of seven different opinions are permitted.

Active links are plotted as a function of time · N, N being the number of nodes. Physical time is given in an output monitor at the left of this plot. In that plot we can also see the fraction of nodes of a certain colour. Select opinions-to-plot to choose the number of opinions to be plotted.

The dynamics iterate the following steps:

  1. Select a node of the network at random with uniform probability.
  2. Select a neighbour of the node above with uniform probability.
  3. The first node adopts the opinion of the neighbour chosen.