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What do ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ ‘Macbeth,’ and a list of Facebook friends all have in common?

New research finds that works of literature, musical pieces, and social networks have a similar underlying structure that allows them to share large amounts of information efficiently.
two network graphs showing the number of characters and network density in king lear and macbeth
Examples of statistical network analysis of characters in two of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Two characters are connected by a line, or edge, if they appear in the same scene.  The size of the circles that represent these characters, called nodes, indicate how many other characters one is connected to. The network's density relates to how complete the graph is, with 100% density meaning that it has all of the characters are connected. (Image: Martin Grandjean)

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