
Learning about Network Theory - fogus
http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/6/9/learning-about-network-theory.html
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kurtosis
A very nice introduction - There is a also a lot of interesting material on
these topics in the academic literature. Here's a couple of nice examples:

(1) M. Newman's publications contain a wealth of ideas and insights into these
topics:

<http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/pubs.html>

Also, much credit goes to Barabasi who made many contributions to this field
and did much to popularize it (along with Watts and Strogatz)

<http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs-revart.php>

For the future, there are many interesting possibilities in the study of
dynamical processes on networks (e.g. reaction-diffusion / message passing /
synchronization) - for a high level treatment see this excellent review:

Critical phenomena in Complex Networks <http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0010>

~~~
bootload
_"... Also, much credit goes to Barabasi who made many contributions to this
field and did much to popularize it (along with Watts and Strogatz) ..."_

Watts & Stogatz are instrumental in our understanding of _"small world
networks"_ ~ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network> and Barabasi
discovered Hubs (frequency of connections between nodes) ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert-Laszlo_Barabasi>

_"... error tolerance is not shared by all redundant systems: it is displayed
only by a class of in-homogeneously wired called scale-free networks, which
include the World-Wide Web, the Internet6, social networks7 and cells8. We
find that such networks display an unexpected degree of robustness, the
ability of their nodes to communicate being unaffected even by un-
realistically high failure rates. However, error tolerance comes at a high
price in that these networks are extremely vulnerable to attacks ..."_

Barabasi is important because of this paper, Albert R., Jeong R., Barabasi A,
_"2000, Nature #406, pp 378-402., 'Error and attack tolerance of complex
networks'"_ , (pdf 249Kb) ~ [http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs/CCNR-
ALB_Publications/200007...](http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs/CCNR-
ALB_Publications/200007-27_Nature-ErrorAttack/200007-27_Nature-
ErrorAttack.pdf)

Do not forget Vespignani ~
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Vespignani> who applied both the
small world network idea and hubs to produce network diagrams showing
_"spatial spreading of disease"_ ~
<http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21484.full>

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merraksh
A good understanding of Graph Theory would help too. The books "Graphs and
Hypergraphs" by Claude Berge and "Random Graphs" by Bela Bollobás are among
the most important in the area.

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emehrkay
Nice. I just got turned on to Neo4j.org (graph db) and the resources listed
here will help me better understand what is going on.

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tjmaxal
It goes to show you how complex the subject is when the intro is this long and
requires this much explanation.

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mentatseb
Btw, you can easily analyze your Facebook friend network:

[http://blog.sociomantic.com/2010/05/using-netvizz-gephi-
to-a...](http://blog.sociomantic.com/2010/05/using-netvizz-gephi-to-analyze-a-
facebook-network/)

Gephi is used to visualize graphs:

<http://gephi.org/>

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reader5000
the bespectacled aristocrat in the photo is what sells it

