***** To join INSNA, visit http://www.insna.org *****

Is there any way of normalizing tie strength in the literature? If one
defines tie strength between A and B as the number of times A and B have
seen each other, then tie strengths (for the whole social network) are
not comparable. To see why, consider that A and B have met four times.
Those four times entail completely different meanings in different
situations - for instance, they would reflect either an absent tie (if A
and B are jet setters and go out a lot) or a strong tie (if they are
homebodies and rarely go out). Also, if one normalizes the strength on
A->B based on A's total number of encounters, then one should choose a
threshold that differentiates strong ties from weak ties, and this begs
the question of how to choose that threshold :-)


Daniele.
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/d.quercia/
group blog: http://mobblog.cs.ucl.ac.uk/ (join us!)

_____________________________________________________________________
SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
network researchers (http://www.insna.org). To unsubscribe, send
an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line
UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.