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"Push me, pull me," by Bruce Schechter. New Scientist, 24 August 2002, pages 42-45.
This article describes how the Ising model, a standard tool used in physics to represent how magnetization spreads through a material, has been applied to mathematically model how opinions spread in groups of people. Researchers used the model to simulate elections and then compared the simulations against election data; the simulations closely mirrored reality. This shows, the article says, that "social factors strongly influence the outcome of an election"; what candidates say and do is less important than conversations among voters. Another result is that neighbors reach consensus more easily in small informal groups than in large meetings.
--- Allyn Jackson
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