Introduction to different data sources

In practice, we’ll rarely create a network from scratch or come across a data source that naturally occurs as a network. We often must create a network from different data sources, including survey or sensor data, geographic data, time series data, demographic data, or even output data from machine learning models. In this section, we’ll overview some common data sources before diving into two practical examples of data wrangling with igraph and NetworkX. Let’s dive into our first data source, social interaction data.

Social interaction data

Much of network science originated with social networks, which capture relationships or interactions between individuals. Marketing campaigns often recruit individuals with many connections to others within a demographic group of interest, as well as those whose connections also have many connections within a demographic group. For instance, a toy manufacturer might have a new toy...