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.
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Famous quotes containing the words contact and/or process:
“No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice.”
—Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)
“... geometry became a symbol for human relations, except that it was better, because in geometry things never go bad. If certain things occur, if certain lines meet, an angle is born. You cannot fail. It’s not going to fail; it is eternal. I found in rules of mathematics a peace and a trust that I could not place in human beings. This sublimation was total and remained total. Thus, I’m able to avoid or manipulate or process pain.”
—Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)