csci 210: Data Structures

Graphs and social networks

Social networks
Active area of research
motivated in part by growing public fascination withe the complex connectedness of modern society
Social networks have grown in complexity
technological advances, global travel, global communication
Networks come up in many other contexts
information networks
economic networks
trade networks
biological networks
Necessary to study and understand the structure and behavior or complex networks
Networks
How should we think about networks?
Structurally, networks are graphs
we can nd structural properties of the underlying graph
But structure is not enough. We also need a framework for reasoning about behavior
and interaction in complex networks.
Traditionally networks have been studied across many disciplines
sociology, economics,...
now coming together with computer science, math, physics.
From computer science point of view, we are primarily interested in
the structural properties of the network
modeling networks as classes of graph and studying their properties
Graphs and social networks
Paths, cycles, connectivity
Are two people connected?
Are any two people connected?
Are there cycles of friends?
What is the size of the largest group of friends?
Distances
What is the distance of person A to person B?
What is the average distance between two people in a network?
What is the diameter of the network?
Centrality
What is the center of the network?
Clustering
What are the underlying clusters in the network?
Graphs and social networks
Paths, cycles, connectivity
Traverse the graph (BFS or DFS)
Time: O(V+E)
Graphs and social networks
Distances
Compute the distance between two vertices in a graph
BFS (from one vertex until reaching the other)
Time: O(V+E)
Compute the average distances between two vertices in a graph
BFS from all vertices in G and record all distances
Time: O(V(V+E)) = O(V
2
+ VE)
Compute the diameter of a network
diameter = the length of the longest shortest path between two vertices.
Meaning: gives an idea of the time it takes to spread something over the network.
To compute:
need to compute shortest paths between all pairs of vertices
run BFS from every vertex as source and record pairwise distances
this takes O(V(V+E)) time and O(V
2
) space.

Centrality
Degree centrality
degree(v) = the number of edges of a node
the center is the node with largest degree
time to compute: ?
Closeness centrality
closeness(v) = the average path length to all vertices that are reachable from v
the center is the node with lowest closeness
time to compute: ?
Betweenness centrality
idea: vertices that occur on many shortest path have higher betweenness than those that do not.
time to compute: ?
Various other measures of centrality, depending on specic application
Graphs and social networks
Clustering (graph partitioning)
Goal: Identify the underlying clusters in a graph
from http://projects.si.umich.edu/netlearn/GUESS/betweennessclust.html
Clustering (graph partitioning)
Goal: Identify the underlying clusters in a graph
A wide range of methods
in social networks: clustering using betweenness
Betweenness of an edge e:
the total number of times the edges appears on a shortest path between vertices in the graph
How to compute betweenness values for all edges?
Time?
Clustering (graph partitioning)
Goal: Identify the underlying clusters in a graph
A wide range of methods
in social networks: clustering using betweenness
Betweenness of an edge e:
the total number of times the edges appears on a shortest path between vertices in the graph
How to compute betweenness values for all edges?
compute shortest path between all pairs of vertices, keep track of the edges on the shortest paths, and
update the frequency of each edge
Time:
O(V
2
+ VE)
Clustering (graph partitioning)
Goal: Identify the underlying clusters in a graph
A wide range of methods
in social networks: clustering using betweenness
Betweenness of an edge e:
the total number of times the edges appears on a shortest path between vertices in the graph
Clustering using betweenness:
repeatedly remove the edge of highest betweenness.
[demo]: http://projects.si.umich.edu/netlearn/GUESS/betweennessclust.html