Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 325, Issue 5948, Pages 1696-1700Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1174562
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Funding
- Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas-Junta para la Ampliacion de Estudios (JAE) postdoctoral fellowship
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq) (Brazil) Percentage of occurrence Relative mRNA levels doctoral fellowship
- NSF [SBE 0624318]
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The identification and modeling of patterns of human activity have important ramifications for applications ranging from predicting disease spread to optimizing resource allocation. Because of its relevance and availability, written correspondence provides a powerful proxy for studying human activity. One school of thought is that human correspondence is driven by responses to received correspondence, a view that requires a distinct response mechanism to explain e-mail and letter correspondence observations. We demonstrate that, like e-mail correspondence, the letter correspondence patterns of 16 writers, performers, politicians, and scientists are well described by the circadian cycle, task repetition, and changing communication needs. We confirm the universality of these mechanisms by rescaling letter and e-mail correspondence statistics to reveal their underlying similarity.
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