Nature | DeepDyve

journal article

LitStream Collection

Mechanisms and models of human dynamics (Reply)

2006 Nature

Kentsis notes that the response time to an e-mail or a letter depends on the semantic content of the correspondence, as well as the social context in which the communication arises 1 . We would add that it also depends on deadlines, the time dependence of priorities and the dropping of past-deadline messages 2 , making human response dynamics sufficiently complicated that no simple model could fully account for it 3,4,5,6 . However, the advantage of the proposed modelling framework is that most of these effects can be incorporated into it, and their impact on the queuing process can be systematically evaluated. Addressing some of these additional mechanisms, including those suggested by Kentsis, requires information that is beyond reach for most researchers at this point.

journal article

LitStream Collection

Mechanisms and models of human dynamics

Kentsis, Alex

2006 Nature

doi: 10.1038/nature04901pmid: 16724015

Arising from: J. G. Oliveira & A.-L. Barabási Nature437, 1251 (2005); Barabási & Oliveira reply.A stochastic queue model of human behaviour developed on the basis of the distribution of timing of tasks, as studied in a sample of e-mail messages at a university1 and in the written correspondence of Albert Einstein2, may not be as simple as it seems. Although this model reproduces the apparently non-Poisson distribution of correspondence delays, its interpretation is more complicated than suggested by Barabási, who claims that humans execute their tasks based on some perceived priority, setting up queues that generate very uneven waiting-time distributions for different tasks1. Such an explanation is intuitively appealing in the context of the queue metaphor, but does not exclude other mechanisms. By attributing delays in the correspondence to task priorities, this explanation ignores two important classes of mechanism that also contribute to the apparent distributions of task timings: the semantic content of an individual's correspondence and the social context in which this correspondence occurs.

journal article

LitStream Collection

Horacio Frydman

2006 Nature

doi: 10.1038/7092xviiapmid: N/A