Editing Small-world network (section)

=== Applications to computing ===

Small-world networks have been used to estimate the usability of information stored in large databases.  The measure is termed the Small World Data Transformation Measure.<ref>{{Cite web | first1 = Robert | last1 = Hillard | first2 = Sean | last2 = McClowry | first3 = Brenda | last3 = Somich | name-list-style = vanc | url = http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/Small_Worlds_Data_Transformation_Measure | title = Small Worlds Data Transformation Measure | work = MIKE2.0, the open source methodology for Information Development | access-date = 2012-01-05 | archive-date = 2015-09-12 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150912023744/http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/Small_Worlds_Data_Transformation_Measure | url-status = live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Hillard |first=Robert | name-list-style = vanc | title = Information-Driven Business |year=2010|publisher=Wiley|isbn=978-0-470-62577-4}}</ref> The greater the database links align to a small-world network the more likely a user is going to be able to extract information in the future.  This usability typically comes at the cost of the amount of information that can be stored in the same repository.

The [[Freenet]] peer-to-peer network has been shown to form a small-world network in simulation,<ref>{{cite thesis | last = Sandberg | first = Oskar | name-list-style = vanc | degree = Ph.D. | title = Searching in a Small World | url = https://freenetproject.org/papers/lic.pdf | publisher = Chalmers University of Technology and Göteborg University | location = Göteborg, Sweden | date = 2005 | access-date = 2013-12-12 | archive-date = 2012-03-16 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120316102141/https://freenetproject.org/papers/lic.pdf | url-status = live }}</ref> allowing information to be stored and retrieved in a manner that scales efficiency as the network grows.

[[Nearest neighbor search|Nearest Neighbor Search]] solutions like [[Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs|HNSW]] use small-world networks to efficiently find the information in large item corpuses.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW) {{!}} Pinecone |url=https://www.pinecone.io/learn/series/faiss/hnsw/ |access-date=2024-03-05 |website=www.pinecone.io |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Understanding Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW) |url=https://www.datastax.com/guides/hierarchical-navigable-small-worlds |access-date=2024-03-05 |website=DataStax |language=en}}</ref>