Generalized model for human dynamics

Human dynamics model consistent with our natural ability to perform different activities is put forward by first arguing limitations of the model suggested by Barabási (Nature, 435, 207-211, 2005). Humans are capable of performing different types of activities which fill the time available between daily routine basic activities of cleaning themselves, eating and sleeping. The range of activities is substantial but for discussion I mention a few types of activities such as electronic communication, making telephone calls, meeting people and browsing internet etc [1]. In each type of activity, many events (tasks) are performed at different times, e.g. e-mail reply to a received e-mail is considered as an individual event and many such events belong to electronic communication activity. Recent observations indicate that the distributions, of waiting time (time taken to reply to a received message) and inter-event time between two consecutive emails during occurrences of many events, depart from the Poisson distribution and have burst characteristics [1]. This fact led Barabási [1] to suggest a model different than the available models based on Poisson processes and the model indeed captured the observed phenomenon in waiting time distribution. Here first I show weaknesses in Barabsi model and then put forward a generalized model for proper description of dynamics of human activities. In Barabási model, each individual has a priority list with L events (tasks) having different priorities governed by parameters xi(i = 1, 2, , L) ∗ Email: [email protected]