Assortative

Assortative interactions can generate highly nonrandom variation among groups.

We don’t date the girl next door; we date the girl who has been served up by an assortative algorithm.

In an assortative network, highly connected individuals are linked mostly to other highly connected people. This results in an outbreak that spreads quickly through these clusters of high-risk individuals, but struggles to reach the other, less connected, parts of the network.