Week 11 - Communities in Networks

Dad Joke

The guy who stole my diary died yesterday.

My thoughts are with his family.

Housekeeping

  • Make an appointment for Self Assessment Reflection review
  • Submit Exam Questions ASAP
  • What to do on Thursday - R Lab or activity?
  • No class on Tuesday, November 5th
    • Conversation on Discord instead
    • Post 1 question and 1 thing you’ve learned
    • Respond to 2 other posts

Plan for today

  • Groups in networks review
  • Discussion questions
  • R

Community Detection Review

  • What is a component? (Hint: there’s often one “giant” component)
  • What is a clique?
  • What is the weakness of cliques as a way of identifying groups?
  • What is a k-plex? (Hint: related to cliques)
  • The goal of most community detection algorithms is high modularity. What does that mean?

Core and Periphery Review

  • Why do groups often have a core and a periphery?
  • Given some of the other theories we’ve talked about, how would you expect the periphery to differ from the core?
  • What role does the periphery have in protests (Barberá et al. reading)?
  • What is one way to identify who is in the core or periphery?

Coreness Example

Discussion Questions

  • Do k-plexes really happen? Are you really connected to everyone but one person?
  • Clustering coefficient
  • Homophily vs. cliques
  • Networks vs. communities
  • Minimum size of core