Over the past decade there has been a growing public fascination with the complex “connectedness” of modern society. This connectedness is found in many contexts: in the rapid growth of the Internet and the Web, in the ease with which global communication now takes place, and in the ability of news and information as well as epidemics and financial crises to spread around the world with surprising speed and intensity. These are phenomena that involve networks and the aggregate behavior of groups of people; they are based on the links that connect us and the ways in which each of our decisions can have subtle consequences for the outcomes of everyone else.
This short course is an introduction to the analysis of complex networks, with a special focus on social networks and the Web - its structure and function, and how it can be exploited to search for information. Drawing on ideas from computing and information science, applied mathematics, economics and sociology, the course describes the emerging field of study that is growing at the interface of all these areas, addressing fundamental questions about how the social, economic, and technological worlds are connected.
1) Graph theory and social networks
2) The World Wide Web
3) Network dynamics
Reading:
Course on Network Science held by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi at Northeastern University, Boston, MA: link
Date | Topic | Learning material | Homework | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. | Monday, 17.02.2014 | Introduction to Complex Network Analysis. | slides | Reading: Chapter 1, 2 of Kleinberg's book and Chapter 1, 2 of Barabasi's book. | ||
2. | Thursday, 20.02.2014 | Basic network measures: degree, distance, clustering | ||||
3. | Monday, 24.02.2014 | Basic network measures: degree, distance, clustering | slides | |||
4. | Thursday, 27.02.2014 | Random graphs and real networks | slides | Reading: Chapter 3 of Barabasi's book | ||
Monday, 03.03.2014 | Lecture canceled | |||||
5. | Thursday, 06.03.2014 | Network analytics with Cytoscape | Cytoscape website | |||
6. | Monday, 10.03.2014 | Small world, Strength of weak ties | slides | Reading: Chapter 3 of Kleinberg's book, Milgram's small world experiment, Watts' email experiment, Leskovec's IM experiment, Granovetter's Strength of Weak Ties theory, Onnela et al.'s Strength of Weak Ties experiment | ||
7. | Thursday, 13.03.2014 | Organization of Translation Project | NetSci Book | |||
8. | Monday, 17.03.2014 | Centrality measures | slides | |||
9. | Monday, 24.03.2014 | Scale free networks. Generative models: Small World model and Barabasi-Albert model (Preferential attachment) | slides Scale Free Property slides Small World Model slides Barabasi Albert Model | Read Chapters 4 and 5 of Barabasi's book. Read original papers of Watts-Strogatz model and Barabasi-Albert model | ||
10. | Thursday, 27.03.2014 | Preferential attachment (continued) | ||||
11. | Monday, 07.04.2014 | Link prediction | slides | Guest lecturer: Giulio Rossetti (Dottorato di Ricerca in Informatica, Università di Pisa) | ||
12. | Thursday, 10.04.2014 | Network simulations with NetLogo. Network robustness to failures and attacks. | NetLogo website Slides Barabasi Class 9 | Read Chapter 8 of Barabasi's book. | ||
13. | Monday, 14.04.2014 | Il contributo della Social Network Analysis alla “peace research” | Abstract | Guest lecturer: Prof. Andrea Salvini, Dip. Scienze Sociali, Univ. Pisa | ||
14. | Monday, 28.04.2014 | Diffusion, spreading, contagion, epidemics | slides Leskovec, slides Leskovec | Read Chapter 16 and 17 of Kleinberg's book. | ||
15. | Monday, 05.05.2014 | Diffusion, spreading, contagion, epidemics (continued) | ||||
16. | Thursday, 08.05.2014 | Diffusion, spreading, contagion, epidemics (continued) | slides Leskovec slides Barabasi | Read Chapter 19 and 21 of Kleinberg's book. | ||
17. | Monday, 12.05.2014 | Diffusion, spreading, contagion, epidemics (continued) | ||||
18. | Thursday, 17.05.2014 | Network effects: Schelling's segregation model | ||||
19. | Monday, 19.05.2014 | Project assignment and organisation | ||||
20. | Friday, 06.06.2014 | PhD workshop | Tiziano De Matteis: Models for evolving graphs. Andrea De Salve: Spreading in Distributed Online Social Networks. Francesco Piccinno: Large Graph Processing | Hours: 14:00-16:00 Room: Sala Seminari Est - Dip. Informatica |