🕹 I am Insta Famous

Am I a virus?

Networks
Structure and Processes on Networks
Degree, Power
Network Effects
Published

January 4, 2024

Modified

May 27, 2026

Petr Slováček on Unsplash

Introduction

Do you think your friends have more friends than you have? Do you think that you are outside the herd, and that what you think or do is from your own mind?

Anyways…

Activities

Activity-1: Secret Santa Game

Let us play this in the vanilla way: Paper chits with names in a bin and drawing them in turn. What can go wrong with this? Ask Avni Gupta.

Should we use this instead?https://www.drawnames.com.sg/secret-santa-generator

Discussion: Nodes, Links, Link Directionality, Connected and Disconnected Networks

Activity-2: Barabasi Cocktail Party Game

This is a game “invented” by Alberto-Laszlo Barabasi, a Network Science pioneer and expert, who has written a wonderful, and wonderfully acessible, book on Network Science, available online. http://networksciencebook.com/

  1. Please take a coin in your hand. (A rupee coin is good!)
  2. Find a stranger potential new friend in the classroom. Both of you toss your coins.
  3. If the coins show two Heads or two Tails, introduce yourselves, make small talk, exchange classroom and college gossip. 2 Minutes!
  4. Make a note of your new friends initials.
  5. We will plot this conversation on the board. How?
Connect the Dots

Discussion: Network Mechanisms, Information Flow, Giant Component, Emergence

Activity-3: Indian Surnames Game

  1. How many common Indian surnames do we know? Let us write them on the board.
  2. Each of us will now look at each surname and recollect how many people they know with that surname.
  3. Write down the score for each surname.
  4. Let’s plot this on (yet another) network!!

Discussion: Node Degree, Giant Component? Small Worlds? Multi-Link network, Link Values or Costs

Activity-4: Hi, I am Kevin Bacon, SMI Foundation Batch

Let us find a Keven Bacon in SMI Foundation Studies Programme!! Six Degrees of Separation…or of Kevin Bacon? Look at this video before you proceed!

Six Degrees of Separation
  1. Collect friends Data from across college/class, import and plot, analyze and comment
  2. Use this online tool at DataBasic.io https://databasic.io to Connect the Dots, OR
  3. Even more fun at at GraphCommons https://graphcommons.com/graphs/new

Discussion: Node Degree, Centrality, Betweenness, Link Values or Costs

Activity-5: Can you introduce me to Chandler, again?

  1. Take your favourite Literary Work / TV Serial / Movie and create a Network Database for it.
  2. How? Use conversations between pairs of individuals (nodes) to create links. E.g. each distinct conversation is a link, and the number of sentences uttered is the weight of the link.
  3. Visualize it either with or without tech tools From Teach Engineering, this Activity Sheet https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/uno_graphtheory_lesson01_activity2. Hah! Engineering in a Design college!!🤣
  4. Can also use Graph Comicshttps://aviz.fr/~bbach/graphcomics/

Discussion: Networks are everywhere, Cannot "unsee" them, You are a node and you are a link...are you?

References

  1. Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Network Science. http://networksciencebook.com
  2. Dmitry Zinoniev, Network Science Intro Slides. https://www.slideshare.net/DmitryZinoviev/workshop-20212296
  3. The Network Effects Bible. https://www.nfx.com/post/network-effects-bible
  4. Mark Newman, The Physics of Networks. Good intro Power Laws and examples of many networks. Read the PDF

    Download PDF File

    Unable to display PDF file. Download instead.
  5. The Historical Network Research Community. https://historicalnetworkresearch.org
  6. Konrad M. Lawson, Toilers and Gangsters: Simple Network Visualization with R for Historians
  7. A Network oriented short story. Frigyes Karinthy, “Chains”. Read PDF
  8. Who told you about Srishti? Where? Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties, https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jure/pub/papers/granovetter73ties.pdf
  9. Michele Coscia. 2019. Who will Cluster the Cluster Makers? https://www.michelecoscia.com/?p=1709 Accessed 12 Jan 2024.
  10. Ran Katzir. Nov 16, 2019. Experience Network Science Through Play.https://medium.com/@ran_katzir/teaching-network-science-using-board-games-f78489a3b3bd
  11. Mark Hoffman, Methods for Network Analysis. https://bookdown.org/markhoff/social_network_analysis/
  12. Omar Lizardo and Isaac Jilbert, Social Networks: An Introduction. https://bookdown.org/omarlizardo/_main/
  13. David Easely and Kleinberg. Networks, Market and Crowds. The Rich get Richer. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch18.pdf
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