1. the Responsibility of Complexity Science
Success and
the Responsibility of Complexity Science
@robysinatra
Roberta Sinatra

2. Think about the most famous piece of art in the world, just the first thing that pops into your head.

3. I am sure that most of your have thought about the Mona Lisa
I am sure that most of your have thought about the Mona Lisa. It is the best known, the most visited, the most parodied work of art in the world.
As impressive and valuable the Monalisa is, Leonardo DaVinci and probably no art historian a few centuries ago would have predicted…

4. … the success of the MonaLisa
… the success of the MonaLisa. If YOU HAVE BEEN at the louvre, you have probably experienced the elbowing and the huge crowds that at any time of the year tries to get a glimpse of the painting. What many don’t know is that the painting was largely ignored for some centuries - its fame started at the beginning of last century, after it was stolen. It took the Louvre three days to realize that the painting had disappeared. The story of the theft hit the frontpage of newspaper internationally, as the painting had been stolen by an Italian to be brought back to Italy, were it was painted. When the Monalisa was finally given back to the Louvre, many started visiting the museum to see this painting, which must be exceptional to have been stolen and have so much coverage.

5. this story shows the difference between performance and success.
The physical painting of MonaLisa is a product of DaVinci’s perfomance. On the other hand the crowds at the Louvre are a reflection of how society perceives it
Performance
Success

6. Performance is about you
Performance is about you, it’s what you do, it is an individual attribute - it’s your painting, your paper, your work. CLICK
Performance is about you

7. Success is instead about us, it reflects what we think about your performance, it is a social phenomenon, as it exists only in the context of a society. CLICK
Success is about us

8. Now, this is important - because we often work under the assumption that we do something good, then we are going to be successful, that performance and success are linked.
Why is this important?

9. Salganik, Dodds, Watts, Science, 311, 5762:854-6 (2006)
There are important works showing that the connection between performance and success is not trivial. For example, Salganik, Dodds, and Watts have set up a controlled experiment to show the relation between performance and success in music, and find that success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible. So performance and success are different, yet we don’t have a good understanding of how success emerges.
Simkin and Roychowdhury, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 32(2), pp (2006)
Salganik, Dodds, Watts, Science, 311, 5762:854-6 (2006)
Watts, Crown Busines (2011)

10. what will be
the next great
discovery?

11. Funding agencies Editors Institutions
the desire to predict discoveries—to have some idea, in advance, of what will be discovered, by whom, when, and where— pervades nearly all aspects of modern science
Clauset, Larremore, Sinatra, Science 355, 477–480 (2017)

13. Databases of publications and citations, with the implicit assumption that an outstanding discovery has impact on the scientific community, which reacts with praise and followup

14. Measures assess the past

15. Clauset, Larremore, Sinatra, Science 355, 477–480 (2017)
Measures are good at predicting discoveries for which we have already acquired a lot of preliminary evidence. We are good at predicting that we will measure the gravitational waves. However they fail to capture
Clauset, Larremore, Sinatra, Science 355, 477–480 (2017)

16. Vast amount of data is useful,
Problem 1.
Vast amount of data is useful,
but not sufficient
Self-fulfilling prophecy

17. 15 years later

18. 15 years later Performance Success
There is a chance that the discovery of penicillin would not be embraced and would go unnoticed
15 years later
Performance
Success

19. not because of their face value
Problem 2.
We detect discoveries
through their success,
not because of their face value

20. So, what can we do?

21. what will be
the next great
discovery?

22. high impact discovery? what will be the next great
We have to acknowledge the social nature of how we identify great discoveries

23. We need to acknowledge the social nature of success measures
This applies to many fields: we identify the best art because of its

24. If we realise that discoveries and their impact are driven by social phenomena,
Skill
Luck
Sinatra, Wang, Deville, Song, Barabási, Science, 354, 6312, aaf5239 (2016)

25. Hot Hand
Liu, Wang, Sinatra, Lee Giles, Song, Wang, Nature, to be published (2018).

26. Performance
Success

27. the laws behind social phenomena
Complexity Science
to unveil
the laws behind social phenomena
leading to success

28. the mechanisms and biases behind these social phenomena
We need to understand
the mechanisms and biases behind these social phenomena

29. Self-fulfilling prophecy
Data
Models and Theory
Understanding

30. As complex systems scientists,
we have the moral duty to understand performance and success

31. @robysinatra
Thank you!