Network Analysis Literacy

Katharina A. Zweig
University of Kaiserslautern
Department of Computer Science
Graph Theory & Complex Network Analysis Group
Gottlieb-Daimler-Strasse, Building 48
D-67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
http://gtna.informatik.uni-kl.de/en/

 Abstract

Network analysis provides a perspective on how to find and quantify significant structures in the interaction patterns between different types of actors and on how to relate these structures to properties of the actors. It has proven itself to be use- ful for the analysis of biological and social networks, but also for networks de- scribing complex systems in economy, psychology, geography, and various other fields. Today, network analysis packages in the open-source platform R and other open-source software projects enable scientists from all fields to quickly apply net- work analytic methods to their data sets. Altogether these applications offer such a wealth of network analytic methods that it can be overwhelming for someone just entering this field. This talk provides some examples demonstrating that not every method can be used for every kind of network or research questions - and that there are even some relations that should not be displayed as networks at all.