Nodes, Edges, and Network Measures
The term social network has entered common language and is understood to describe circles of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and so on. However, networks are well grounded in mathematics, and understanding how to represent, describe, and measure properties of networks will be the foundations of quantitative network analysis.
The basic units of a social network are the nodes, which usually represent people, and the edges, which represent relationships. A collection of nodes and edges forms a network or graph. This chapter introduces the fundamental concepts of nodes and edges, how to represent networks, and network features such as cliques, clusters, bridges, and hubs.
Keywords
nodes, edges, graphs, ...
Get Analyzing the Social Web now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
