Contact Process (mathematics)
The contact process is a model of an interacting particle system. It is a continuous time Markov process with state space, where is a finite or countable graph, usually Z. The process is usually interpreted as a model for the spread of an infection: if the state of the process at a given time is, then a site in is "infected" if and healthy if . Infected sites become healthy at a constant rate, while healthy sites become infected at a rate proportional to the number infected neighbors. One can generalize the state space to, such is called the multitype contact process. It represents a model when more than one type of infection is competing for space.
Read more about Contact Process (mathematics): Dynamics, Voter Model
Famous quotes containing the words contact and/or process:
“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.”
—Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)