Construct · 6 fields · 12 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one name, six constructs Nearest construct by meaningdiffusion of innovationscompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to diffusion is diffusion of innovations.
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The net transport of matter from regions of higher concentration to regions of lower concentration, driven by nothing but the random thermal motion of individual particles. Fick fixed the macroscopic law in 1855 by analogy with Fourier's heat conduction: flux is proportional to the concentration gradient. Einstein supplied the microscopic mechanism in 1905, showing that Brownian motion is diffusion seen one particle at a time and that mean squared displacement grows linearly with time. Nothing here chooses, imitates, or communicates; the spread is a statistical consequence of many independent random walks.[1][2]
A generative model trained by gradually destroying data with Gaussian noise over many steps and learning to reverse each step, so that sampling from pure noise and denoising yields a new image, molecule, or audio clip. Sohl-Dickstein and colleagues introduced the idea in 2015 by borrowing the forward process directly from nonequilibrium thermodynamics; Ho, Jain, and Abbeel's 2020 simplification made it competitive with adversarial models. The forward process is literal physical diffusion in data space. What spreads is noise, and the object of interest is the learned reverse.[3][4]
The rate at which a new technology is taken up, explained by the profitability of adopting it. Griliches fitted logistic curves to hybrid-corn acreage in every corn-growing state in 1957 and showed that the origin, slope, and ceiling of each curve tracked expected returns, not farmers' temperament. Hägerstrand, in the same decade, modelled diffusion as a spatial process: adoption spreads outward from initial adopters through a distance-decaying contact field, which he simulated with Monte Carlo methods before the term was common in social science. The economist's adopter calculates; the geographer's adopter is reachable.[5][6]
The timing of first purchases of a new durable good, modelled as the sum of two hazards: a constant coefficient of innovation, p, for buyers who adopt regardless of others, and a coefficient of imitation, q, that multiplies the fraction who have already bought. Bass proposed the model in 1969 and fitted it to televisions, refrigerators, and room air conditioners. The parameters are estimated from sales data alone; no adopter is ever surveyed. It is the sociologists' S-curve turned into a forecasting equation with two knobs.[7]
The process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system, Rogers's definition, unchanged across five editions since 1962. The founding study is Ryan and Gross's 1943 survey of Iowa farmers adopting hybrid seed corn, which found the S-shaped adoption curve and traced it to neighbours talking to neighbours rather than to salesmen. Rogers added the adopter categories, the five perceived attributes, and the innovation-decision process; Strang and Soule, Wejnert, and Greenhalgh and colleagues each reviewed the sprawl that followed. The mechanism is interpersonal influence, and the unit is a person deciding.[8][9][10]
The adoption of a policy by one government made more likely by its prior adoption in others, usually neighbours. Walker ranked the American states by how early they adopted eighty-eight programmes in 1969 and argued that states copy regional leaders. Berry and Berry rebuilt the field in 1990 with event history analysis of state lotteries, which put internal determinants (fiscal stress, election timing) and external diffusion (neighbouring adoptions) into the same hazard model instead of treating them as rival explanations. The adopter is a legislature, and imitation competes with need.[11][12]
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