The hourglass effect in hierarchical dependency networks
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Many hierarchically modular systems are structured in a way that resembles an hourglass. This “hourglass effect” means that the system generates many outputs from many inputs through a relatively small number of intermediate modules that are critical for the operation of the entire system, referred to as the waist of the hourglass. We investigate the hourglass effect in general, not necessarily layered, hierarchical dependency networks. Our analysis focuses on the number of source-to-target dependency paths that traverse each vertex, and it identifies the core of a dependency network as the smallest set of vertices that collectively cover almost all dependency paths. We then examine if a given network exhibits the hourglass property or not, comparing its core size with a “flat” (i.e., non-hierarchical) network that preserves the source dependencies of each target in the original network. As a possible explanation for the hourglass effect, we propose theReuse Preferencemodel that captures the bias of new modules to reuse intermediate modules of similar complexity instead of connecting directly to sources or low complexity modules. We have applied the proposed framework in a diverse set of dependency networks from technological, natural, and information systems, showing that all these networks exhibit the general hourglass property but to a varying degree and with different waist characteristics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".