Graph Construction and Cleaning

We have covered quite a lot of ground up to this point. In the previous chapters, we introduced NLP, network science, and social network analysis, and we learned how to convert raw text into network data. We even visualized a few of these networks. I hope that seeing text converted into a visualized network had the same impact on you as it did on me. The first time I attempted this, I used the book of Genesis, from the Bible, and being able to convert text from thousands of years ago into an actual interactive network took my breath away.

In the previous two chapters, we learned a few different ways to collect text data from websites and social networks on the internet and to use that text data to create networks. The good news is that I don’t need to show you more ways to scrape text. You have enough options, and you should be able to use this knowledge as a foundation for other kinds of scraping.

The bad news is that it is time to get...