
Bassackwards
(August 02, 2002) - We've
been talking about network science as if the basics were obvious. Please accept
our apologies and this short (and surely insufficient) tutorial. Again, the
principles of network science are currently being validated in a broad array of
settings. The network view is a way of thinking about, quantifying and
predicting the degree of connectedness within groups. It has been used to
effectively describe the behavior of the internet (both on a content level, a
traffic level and a purely physical - router- level), the power grid, the
molecular structure of ice, the nervous system of small vertebrae, the telephone
system, social groups and so on.
We're very certain that network theory is
directly applicable to the Human Capital Industry, Organizational Science, The
trench level of Recruiting and the organization of work.
Here are thirty key ideas that compose the roots
of network science:
- Networks are composed of nodes and links.
- A node is an activity or element.
- A link connects that node to another node.
- Nodes can have any number of links.
- A node without a link is not a part of the
network.
- There is probably an upward limit on the
number of links but it is pretty high.
- Some nodes have many more links than others.
These are called hubs.
- A node becomes a hub by acquiring links.
- Generally a network has one dominant hub
(although, there may be other forms of network than have been catalogued.)
- The size of a hub is calculated by the number
of links.
- The dominant hub is four to ten times larger
than any other node.
- Often, there are two or three hubs that are
one fourth to one tenth the size of the dominant hub. This is the second
level of the network.
- The next segment of hubs is again one fourth
to one tenth the size of the second level of hubs.
- A network has levels of hubs down to the
level in which nodes have only one link to the network.
- This sort of scaling, in which each level is
one fourth to one tenth the size of the prior level, is called a power law.
Networks operate using power laws.
- Network communications tend to travel through
hubs to smaller nodes (the path is shorter this way).
- Hubs retain their place at the heart of the
network through their fitness for the task.
- Fitness is a variable that is dependent on
the network's objectives.
- The network itself determines fitness.
- Hubs are not necessarily aligned in their
function for the network.
- A change in the dominant hub may suggest a
change in the character of the network as a whole.
- The point of a network is to reduce the
communications time between nodes while increasing the reliability of the
communication.
- Disabling a hub in its entirety probably
won't disable the network.
- Networks are dynamic. Fitness is dynamic.
- Networks reward novelty and innovation that
improve the network.
- Nodes 'need' hubs.
- On some levels, the dominant hub dramatically
influences the character and performance of the entire network.
- Nodes 'need links.
- The behavior of networks is predictable.
- Nodes my be connected to other networks.
-John
Sumser
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