Network Analysis

In this chapter, I am going to describe three different topics, but at a very high level: graph theory, social network analysis, and network science. We will begin by discussing some of the confusion around the word network and why that will probably remain confusing. Then, we will go over a tiny bit of the past and present of all three. Finally, we will dive into how network analysis has helped me and hopefully how it can help you. This isn’t a code-heavy chapter. This is a high-level introduction.

The following topics will be discussed in this chapter:

• The confusion behind networks
• What is this network stuff?
• Resources for learning network analysis
• Common network use cases
• Advanced network use cases
• Getting started with networks