The Small Scale - Nodes and Centrality

Network science can be used to understand systems not just in terms of which parts are connected, but also in terms of how their neighbors and their neighbor's neighbors. In other words, network science can be used to understand the structure of a networked system are connected. The following three chapters describe how network science is used to understand network structure at various scales. This chapter focuses on the small-scale, or micro-scale, structure. The micro-scale structure describes the positions and roles played by specific nodes within the greater network. Such analysis can be used to identify influential individuals, bottlenecks in flows, and convenient locations for assembling information or resources. These properties (and others) can be characterized using centrality measures, which quantify various structural properties...