Matt Stabeler

In last week’s update I said that I intended to do the following:

• get a better understanding of Graph Theory by finishing the book.
• Implement vector clock code in the simulator, based on proximity, and work towards a location based one.
• Read Knox’s thesis.
• Formalise my thoughts on how to use Vector Clocks of proximity and location, and what metrics can be derived from them
• Generate a rough outline of chapters for my thesis, and identify the main areas for the background section

Since then, I had a quick chat with Paddy, and we discussed simplifying what I should work on,  and came up with a plan to create an example work through of interactions and locations.

Before that, I had started a rough plan of network of interactions within a ficticous network, I also continued to work on the simulator software, and had generated latitude longitude pairs for every reading in the database (479,148 in total).

Since our meeting, I concentrated on working up an example workthough, and for this week I plan to continue this.

I also thought about a small and easy experiment to test the validity of what I was generating; ask some volunteers to:

1. Write down their movement for the last week, and identify the locations they considered to be most common.
2. Write down their predicted locations for the next week.
3. Ask them to keep a record of their actual locations over the next week.

This could conceivably be done very easily in written notebook form, or slightly more challenging – as an online system. This will allow us to get a better idea of what peoples real movements are, and see if it looks like the workthrough we have generated.

My plans for this week are as follows:

• Continue/Finish worked example of interaction network using vector clocks
• Plan short experiment as above (or at least think about whether it would be useful)
• Get a better understanding of Graph Theory by finishing Barabasi’s book.
• Make some enquiries about datasets

(note – Laura is coming home this week)

Other tasks to keep in mind:

• Implement vector clock code in the simulator, based on proximity, and work towards a location based one.
• Read Knox’s thesis.
• Generate a rough outline of chapters for my thesis, and identify the main areas for the background section
• Write down ideas about how to define locations (draft)
• Dig out reviews on DTN’s- especially about patterns and finding important nodes
• Find out about funding from September 2010, (IRCSET, CSI, Lero, more?)