Effect of Spreading Knowledge Centers -- A Physics-based Approach

Abstract

We use a simple physics-inspired model to get an idea about how to enhance the speed with which a society becomes educated if we strategically place our knowledge spreading centers (teachers or educational institutions). We study knowledge spreading using the Ising model, a well-studied model used in physics, specifically statistical mechanics, to describe the phenomenon of ferromagnetism. In the social context, up and down spins are mapped to knowledgeable and ignorant individuals. We introduce some knowledgeable individuals into an otherwise ignorant society and see how their number increases with time, when evolved using the Metropolis algorithm. We find that the knowledge of the society grows faster when the initial group of knowledgeable individuals is maximally spread out. We quantify this effect using the doubling time and look at the distribution of the doubling time as a function of "temperature". In the social context, the energy is identified as the (lack of) happiness of neighbours and temperature is a parameter that quantifies how important happiness is in the society. We point out several limitations of this study in order to facilitate future research.