The Structure of Information Networks

CS584 Spring 2015

Multiple fields, including computer science, political science, physics, epidemiology, biology, ecomics and social science, have independently tackled surprisingly related problems in the past, but are now joining forces to create a new science of the structure of large real-world networks. The course studies the connectness of our social, technological and biological worlds through the lens of graphs and networks. We will look into how people are connected in social networks; how opinions, disease and political activism spreads through society; how communities form and can be inferred from data; theories underlying strong and weak ties in relationships; ranking of the web hyperlink graph (PageRank), and various other topics. We will study models and theory to help explain and exploit the structure of information and social networks. We will also discuss some tools to facilitate the analysis of these networks.