in reply to Re: Node Tension
in thread Node Tension

Here's how I was picturing tension: Imagine an object floating free in space. Plus and minus votes represent the magnitude of force pulling on the object in opposite directions. Overwhelming agreement in one direction or the other will merely cause the object to accelerate through space in that direction, rather than threatening to pull the object apart. In this model, +95/-5 would have the same tension as a +5/-5 node, but would be moving much more swiftly through space.

Having said that, I agree that there's something that might be valuable to capture in the difference between the two examples. Perhaps tension isn't the right word?

Matt

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Re: Re: Re: Node Tension
by Biker (Priest) on May 24, 2002 at 15:35 UTC

    Controversy?

    Everything went worng, just as foreseen.

[reply]
Re^3: Node Tension
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Nov 18, 2005 at 17:25 UTC
    I get pleasing results with this formula: 
    sub tension {
  my ($hi, $lo) = @_;
  $lo or return 0;
  2 * log($lo)/log($hi + .1);
}

    [download]
    where $hi is the higher number of votes (whichever direction) and $lo is the number of votes in the other direction. Any result above 1 represents an interesting amount of tension, IMO. Here's a table of results:
    Hi #Lo #Tension
    3 31.9420
    8 31.0504
    8 81.9881
    20 30.7322
    20 81.3860
    20201.9967
    50 30.5614
    50 81.0626
    50201.5308
    50501.9990
    90 30.4882
    90 80.9240
    90201.3312
    90501.7383
    90901.9995
    Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.
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      That looks pretty good, except it seems to lose the magnitude of the tension. 3 vs 3, 8 vs 8, 50 vs 50 all have similar results.

      (of course that's probably just me visually eyeballing sig figs along a log curve...)

      Cheers,
      Matt

[reply]
        You're right. My notion was only to distinguish interesting from non-interesting. You regain the magnitude if you drop a log:
        Read more... (769 Bytes)
        I'd call < 1.3 low tension, 1.3-2 moderate, >2 strong.
        Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.
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