March 2006
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  

Editor Login


Convener in chief:


David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)

Editors:


Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)

Guy Stuart
(Economic Sociology, Finance)

Allan Friedman
(Simulations)

Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)

Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing)
Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Current Trends)

Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)

Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Citizen Relationship Management)

Categories

Archives

Recent Entries

Recent Comments

Notification


« Brinton Milward on "Dark Networks as Organizational Problems" | Main | NYT magazine article: Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorsts? »

8 March 2006

Network Visualization Tools

I find that when I’m inundated with network data, the best way to get my head around it is through visualization. The human eye seems to be able to identify the important structure and topological dynamics much easier than an algorithm. Over the years I’ve spent most of my time using a Window/Linux application called Pajek. I use a Matlab script to turn an adjacency matrix into files that Pajek can interpret as a network. It supports different shapes, colors, and edges - and even can visualize (more or less) dynamic networks.

pajek_networks_sm.png

One of my Pajek networks from here.

However, things start to break down when the networks go beyond a few hundred nodes. There are several packages for large-scale network visualization - however most come with serious limitations. Walrus creates beautiful networks, but unfortunately they need to be spanning trees.

walrus.png
A 500,000 node Walrus network

There are plenty of other network analysis tools out there - but it’d be great to hear people’s experiences actually using them on real data...

Posted by Nathan Eagle at March 8, 2006 5:03 AM