Working with Networks

I am Insta Famous

Published

August 21, 2022

Modified

May 17, 2025

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?

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/

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

Activity-3: Indian Surnames Game

  1. How many common India 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!!
  5. Try also to create a map using this website: The Memory Underground https://memoryunderground.com

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

Activity-4: Way-Spotting Game

Now that we have an idea of nodes, links and costs, let us get an experience of some more network science ideas:

  1. Make groups of 3.
  2. Head over to http://www.wayspotting.com/index.html
  3. Play!! Make a note of your route each time ( your “traversal” of the network)
  4. Note if you can see the following:
  • Frequently Used Nodes
  • Frequently used Links
  1. See here for more info: https://medium.com/@ran_katzir/teaching-network-science-using-board-games-f78489a3b3bd

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

Activity-5: Hi, I am Kevin Bacon, SMI Foundation 2022 Batch

Let us find a Keven Bacon in SMI Foundation Studies Programme!!

  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-6: Can you Introduce me to Chandler, again?

  1. Take your favourite Literary Work / TV Serial / Movie and create a Network Database for it.
  2. Visualize it either with or without tech tools From Teach Engineering, this Activity Sheet https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/uno_graphtheory_lesson01_activity2
  3. 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?

Activity-7: Why are all Metro Maps at 45 degrees?

  1. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-tate-gallery-by-tube-david-booth/PAG-Gx_SV2jNiw?hl=en

  2. https://search.r-project.org/CRAN/refmans/ggraph/html/layout_tbl_graph_metro.html

  3. Henry Beck’s London Underground Map. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/underground-map-henry-c-beck-london-transport-and-waterlow-sons-ltd/fAHJweSexswKxw?hl=en and

https://g.co/arts/UNfBm6QL5kukYm4r9

References

  1. Dmitry Zinoniev, Network Science Intro Slides, https://www.slideshare.net/DmitryZinoviev/workshop-20212296

  2. Mark Newman, The Physics of Networks,Read the PDF

  3. A Network oriented short story. Frigyes Karinthy, “Chains”. Read PDF

  4. Who told you about Srishti? Where? Read Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jure/pub/papers/granovetter73ties.pdf

  5. Plamen Ch. Ivanov.(30 June 2021) The New Field of Network Physiology: Building the Human Physiolome. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnetp.2021.711778

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