Escher Staircases on the World Wide Web (19 Jul 2004)

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Escher Staircases on the World Wide Web (19 Jul 2004)
The existence of Escher Staircases is partly determined by site size: a small site is less likely to have some than a large site. But it is also partly determined by the structure of the site: one with many links per page will tend to naturally grow Escher Staircases.

Inspection of the individual diagrams shows some trends. Figure 7 gives mainly theme-based staircases: for libraries, math and computer science. Interestingly, however, they are all interconnected. This is partly due to the pseudo-home domains of www2.auckland.ac.nz and www2.vuw.ac.nz, which function as cross-topic connectors (Bjorneborn, 2004). Figure 6, with the home domains, shows how many extra staircases the home domains generate. Figures 2 to 5 echo the themes of math, computer science and library-related sites. Other subjects are also apparent. Figure 5 is a disconnected network, with a student support staircase separate from the main group.

Article URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_6/rousseau/index.html

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