Title of Project

How well does the logistic function model simulate the spread of rumors on social media?

Abstract

Gossip is a key feature of social media, especially on apps such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We analyze how well the logistic function models the spread of rumors by using it to model the spread of attention about Apple Glass, and comparing it to real-world data collected from a network opinion monitoring system called Sproutsocial. We collect the frequency of the keywords mentioned on social media over the period of one month. After deriving the mathematical model, we use two methods -- sum of squares residuals and coefficient of determination -- to find out how well the model fits the data.

Biographies

Verness Chin is currently studying at University of British Columbia as a first-year student in Vantage Science. I’m interested in computer science, especially about programing and artificial intelligence.

Ricky is a first-year student at Vantage College and is interested in biochemistry. He is also interested in table tennis, having been a member of the varsity team in high school and participated in several provincial tournaments.

Haohan Wang is currently a freshman at Vantage College at the University of British Columbia in Canada. She graduated from the International Curriculum Center of China Gaoxin No. 1 High School. Besides, she has a deep interest in mathematics, statistics and computers science and has won many awards in international mathematics competitions.