Book Image

Network Science with Python and NetworkX Quick Start Guide

By : Edward L. Platt
Book Image

Network Science with Python and NetworkX Quick Start Guide

By: Edward L. Platt

Overview of this book

NetworkX is a leading free and open source package used for network science with the Python programming language. NetworkX can track properties of individuals and relationships, find communities, analyze resilience, detect key network locations, and perform a wide range of important tasks. With the recent release of version 2, NetworkX has been updated to be more powerful and easy to use. If you’re a data scientist, engineer, or computational social scientist, this book will guide you in using the Python programming language to gain insights into real-world networks. Starting with the fundamentals, you’ll be introduced to the core concepts of network science, along with examples that use real-world data and Python code. This book will introduce you to theoretical concepts such as scale-free and small-world networks, centrality measures, and agent-based modeling. You’ll also be able to look for scale-free networks in real data and visualize a network using circular, directed, and shell layouts. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to choose appropriate network representations, use NetworkX to build and characterize networks, and uncover insights while working with real-world systems.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Visualization

Network visualizations are some of the most powerful tools for communicating information about relationships and connections. The vast amount of information in many networks can make it tricky to create clear visualizations, sometimes resulting in confusing hairballs. NetworkX is capable of producing many types of visualizations, going well beyond those seen in this book so far. This chapter covers some more advanced visualization techniques, including additional layouts and methods for focusing on the most important parts of a network.

The topics in this chapter include the following:

  • Beyond the hairball: Understanding what makes a good visualization, the challenges of visualizing networks, and general approaches for addressing those challenges
  • Circular layout: A simple method for visualizing smaller networks
  • Shell layout: A technique for visualizing centrality...