On Universality in Human Correspondence Activity

Details On Universality in Human Correspondence Activity On Universality in Human Correspondence Activity

2009-09-25

arxiv.org/abs/0909.4724v1

Science 325 (5948): 1696-1700 (2009)

Physics

Physics and Society

17 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

Scientific paper

10.1126/science.1174562

Identifying and modeling patterns of human activity has important ramifications in applications ranging from predicting disease spread to optimizing resource allocation. Because of its relevance and availability, written correspondence provides a powerful proxy for studying human activity. One school of thought is that human correspondence is driven by responses to received correspondence, a view that requires distinct response mechanism to explain e-mail and letter correspondence observations. Here, we demonstrate that, like e-mail correspondence, the letter correspondence patterns of 16 writers, performers, politicians, and scientists are well-described by the circadian cycle, task repetition and changing communication needs. We confirm the universality of these mechanisms by properly rescaling letter and e-mail correspondence statistics to reveal their underlying similarity.

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