This assignment is to be done individually and will replace one of your Homework grades.  You must complete the entire assignment in order to earn any extra credit points; partial work will not receive any credit.  Most of these questions have multiple parts; please make sure you have answered each question completely before turning your work into me for evaluation.  You will not receive this work back.

Please print out a copy of the article The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (it's a pdf file) and read it.  Feel free to make notes in the margins and underline important passages. As you read the article pay particular attention to Gladwell's definitions of the tipping point and linear thinking. After you have finished the article answer the following questions in a Word document.

1.      What does Gladwell mean at the bottom of page 4 (section 2) when he writes: human beings prefer to think in linear terms? In particular, how does Gladwell's example involving pregnant women and alcohol consumption illustrate linear thinking? Give another example of linear thinking.

2.      Define the term tipping point in your own words.  

A.    How does the phrase "Tomato ketchup in a bottle—none will come and then the lot'll" represent, as Gladwell says, "the fundamental nonlinearity of everyday life"? How does the expression the straw that broke the camel's back also illustrate the concept of the tipping point?

3.      In section 2, Gladwell gives a hypothetical scenario of the spread of a flu virus. By studying his example we can get a better handle on what he means by the tipping point and nonlinear phenomena.

Read this summary of the initial scenario:

One thousand infected people visit New York City. During the day each person comes into close contact with 50 people. But, the infection rate of this particular virus is only 2% (meaning only 2% of the people who encounter the virus will actually become ill). So, each person infects

2% * 50 = .02*50 = 1 new person (check this calculation for yourself).

So, the initial 1000 people infect 1000 new people. On day two, since the virus is only a 24 hour flu, the original group of people is no longer sick, and, therefore, the total number of infected people remains constant at 1000.

During the Christmas season, Gladwell suggests, the average person will come into close contact with more people (since there are more people shopping). He suggests the number will rise from 50 to 55. Open the file FluVirus.xls. Develop a formula and fill the second column with the total number of infected people on a given day. Here is the calculation for Day 1:

B2*55*.02 = 1100 new people. 

A.    Paste the table for the first month into your Word document. (Hint: If you did the formula correctly there should be 304,482 infected people on day 60.)

B.     Make a x,y-scatter plot of the data. Paste the graph into your word document.

4.      Based on your table and graph, answer the following questions: 

A.    Why does the graph represent a non-linear phenomena?

B.     How long does it take for the number of infected people to double?         

5.      Make a third column in your table. Calculate how many times the number of infected people from day 1 is greater than day 0 (Hint: enter the formula =B3/B2 in C3.)  Then do the same for day 2 and day 1 by filling the third column with these ratios. What do you notice about these numbers? Is the number of infected people as a function of time a linear function, an exponential function, or neither?

6.      Gladwell made the assumption that the average person would come into close contact with 50 people on an average day and 55 people during the Christmas season. What would happen if these numbers were raised or lowered? Play with the numbers on your spread sheet (in the formula for column 2) by changing the number 55 to something lower than 50 and something higher than 55. Paste two new XY-scatter plots into your Word document to represent the results of these changes, and describe in a brief paragraph how lowering or raising this number changed the spread of the virus.

7.      Finally, Gladwell uses the idea of the Tipping Point to discuss several political issues. Pick one particular example from his article and answer the following questions:

A.    Does Gladwell take a particular political perspective?  How can you tell?

B.     How does he apply the idea of the Tipping Point?

C.     Do you agree or disagree with his position? Or, do you think his suggestion is plausible? Do you see any limitations of the application of the tipping point model to social phenomena?