CSCI 5352: Network Analysis and Modeling Spring 2024, Syllabus
I am thankful to Profs. Aaron Clauset and Dan Larremore, who shared me their materials for this course.
Textbooks
Networks by M.E.J. Newman, Second edition, Oxford University Press, 2018.
What we did in Spring 2024
Click for the lecture scribbles. Notably, Week 14 in higher-order networks is new. Other parts we had followed existing lecture notes. I am adding relevant papers in the expanded section (work in progress) in case I had a chance to teach the course in the future. Use the external class website to see the papers that we had referenced in this installment.
Week 1: Fundamentals of networks
Tu: syllabus (“Easter Egg”) & course logistics.
From past installments, examples of what was successful & what was challenging.
Then we did self-intro:
(1) name, pronouns, dept;
(2) motivation;
(3) which part of course most looking forward to?
Th: network representation, notations
Week 2: Summary statistics
Week 3: Random graphs with homogeneous degrees
Week 4: Random graphs with heterogeneous degrees
Week 5: Network prediction: node attributes
Week 6: Network prediction: missing links
Week 7: Community structure and mixing patterns
Week 8: Community structure models
Week 9: Spreading processes and cascades
Shalizi & Thomas, “Homophily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies.” (Sociological Methods & Research, 2011; 🔗)
Week 10: Spreading processes with structure
Week 11: Spring break
Week 12: Ranking in networks
On Tuesday, we explored ideas for ranking node importance in networks.
We discussed structural centralities and dynamical centralities.
One takeaway is that, often, a structural centrality is a (cheaper) proxy for the importance of a node in some dynamical phenomenon.
On Thursday, Prof. Dan Larremore came to give a guest lecture on Linear Hierarchies in Complex Networks.
Week 13: Network sampling & Network growth models
Week 14: Higher-order networks
Week 15: Ethics in network science & Project presentations
Week 16: Project presentations
References
External class website: Prof. Aaron Clauset’s webpage .