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IEMS 441: Social Network Analysis


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Prerequisites

The course has no formal pre-requisites but will be most beneficial to students who have had an introductory statistics course covering descriptives for central tendencies and dispersion, correlation, sampling, and significance testing.

Description

This seminar is intended to review theoretical, conceptual, and analytic issues associated with network perspectives on communicating and organizing.

Topics

The course will review scholarship on the science of networks in communication, computer science, economics, engineering, organizational science, life sciences, physical sciences, political science, psychology, and sociology, in order to take an in-depth look at theories, methods, and tools to examine the structure and dynamics of networks.

Coursework

As with most graduate seminars, the majority of class time will be spent discussing the assigned readings. A series of laboratory exercises will provide experience with computer-based network analysis, modeling and visualization tools. Students will write a term paper advancing some theoretical, methodological or computational aspect of network science.

Materials

Most readings will be posted on the Canvas website for downloading under “Files.” Other readings will be available in the course reserves section of Blackboard, which will require login with your NetID and password.  Recurring readings will be taken from Newman; Easley & Kleinberg (E&K); Hanneman & Riddle (H&R); Monge & Contractor (M&C)’ and Wasserman & Faust (W&F). Students are encouraged but not expected to understand the mathematical formulae and proofs when encountered in any of these chapters.

Please plan to purchase the Monge & Contractor text. The text book is available on Amazon in either hardcopy or e-book form: http://goo.gl/cJUvfI. All other readings will be available electronically through Canvas.

Hanneman, R. A. & Riddle, M. (2005). Introduction to social network methods. Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside.http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/nettext

Optional:

Social network analysis: Methods and applications
    . New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Newman, M.E.J. (2010). Networks: An Introduction. Oxford University Press.
Syllabus