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An Introduction to Graph Theory and Network Science (dzone.com)
55 points by stagga_lee on Aug 13, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments


You're better off directly reading the Wikipedia entries for NetSci[1]. Except a brief mention to "energy flows", the linked article fails to mention the study of information diffusion, which ought to be the most critical and active area of network analysis.

In case epistemology and history are your kind of thing, I most highly recommend reading [2], one of the best book I read on the subject.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_science

[2] L. C. Freeman, The development of social network analysis. Booksurge Llc, 2004.


There's also stuff under "Network theory"[1] at Wikipedia. I feel like those two articles should probably be merged, but it hasn't happened yet, and I haven't had time to take a stab at it. But anyway, both articles contain some useful info.

I also recommend these few books as a good starting point:

Network Science: Theory and Applications[2]

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means[3]

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age[4]

The Wisdom of Crowds[5]

Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks[6]

Diffusion of Innovations[7]

Of course - being that Network Science is a multidisciplinary field, that touches a lot of other areas - it can be hard to get a handle on what to study. But those few books - between them - cover a lot of the basics and would give somebody who's interested in this stuff enough background to figure out where to start digging deeper.

For a little bit more on the technical side, a couple of good resources at:

Introductory Graph Theory[8]

Introduction to Graph Theory[9]

Algorithms in Java: Part 5 - Graph Algorithms[10]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory

[2]: http://www.amazon.com/Network-Science-Applications-Ted-Lewis...

[3]: http://www.amazon.com/Linked-Everything-Connected-Else-Means...

[4]: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Science-Connected-Edition/...

[5]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/...

[6]: http://www.amazon.com/Nexus-Worlds-Groundbreaking-Science-Ne...

[7]: http://www.amazon.com/Diffusion-Innovations-5th-Everett-Roge...

[8]: http://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Graph-Theory-Gary-Chartra...

[9]: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Graph-Theory-Dover-Mathem...

[10]: http://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Java-Part-Graph-Pt-5/dp/020...


I would add near the top of your list the awesome (and free[1]) book by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg that accompanies their Cornell undergraduate course:

Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World.

[1] http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/


Oooh, good call. I hadn't read that one, but it looks very good.


Cheap SEO: An Introduction - Take a blog post from 7 months ago (http://thinkaurelius.com/2012/01/10/graph-theory-and-network...) that contains nearly nothing beyond short summaries and links to Wikipedia articles, republish it on some other platform and make sure it is submitted to HN and pushed.


Ha. DZone contacted me last week asking if they could index/republish the blogs at thinkaurelius.com. Of course, I agreed and well, here we are.


Marko's website has more information on graphs including lectures, papers, blog posts and the graph traversal language, Gremlin:

http://markorodriguez.com/


And some Gremlin screencasts and presentations are here: https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki


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