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***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
Cynthia:
You didn't say what software you're using. In general, however, if
you want a shortest-path algorithm to correctly calculate the
shortest paths (in which short paths indicate "strong" connections)
then you will want to define the edge (relation) weight as some
inverse function of whatever quantity you're defining as the network
"strength".
For instance, if you define "strength" with respect to actors a and
b, s(a,b), as "number of conversations", then you can define the edge
weight as follows:
weight(a,b) = 1 / s(a,b)
or, alternatively,
weight(a,b) = 1 / (log(s(a,b)) + 1)
(The "+1" in the denominator is there so that the weight is defined
if s = 1.)
Hope this helps--
Joshua O'Madadhain
On 7 Nov 2005, at 17:09, Bill.Richards wrote:
> ***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****
>
> Cynthia Gigučre <[log in to unmask]> wrote to ask:
>
> My name is Cynthia Gigučre and I’m currently doing my master in
> criminology on a network of individuals importing drugs in Canada.
>
> The data that I’m using are valued data that represent the number of
> conversations between all the members of the criminal group. I want to
> realise an analysis of the average distance between these individuals
> (Network-Cohesion-Distance) and I’m wondering if its possible to
> indicate the type of data as strengths (the data indicate the strength
> of relation between the individuals by representing the number of
> conversations between them, but it doesn’t represent the lengths of
> links between nodes as required in the indications from the Help
> section
> of the software).
> So if I use theses data does it means that the strongest path
> (which is
> the shortest?) is in fact for me the weakest path because it contains
> the least number of conversations? If so, may I still use these
> data in
> this case? (I know I can use the data as adjacency but...)
>
> The algorithm finds the # of edges in the strongest path between each
> pair of nodes, does it means that in my case it calculates the # of
> edges in the shortest path containing the greatest number of
> conversations?
>
> Thanks for your help, I appreciate it.
> Cynthia
>
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jmadden@ics.uci.edu...Obscurium Per Obscurius...www.ics.uci.edu/~jmadden
Joshua O'Madadhain: Information Scientist, Musician, and Philosopher-
At-Tall
It's that moment of dawning comprehension that I live for--Bill
Watterson
My opinions are too rational and insightful to be those of any
organization.
_____________________________________________________________________
SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send
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