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MO412 / MC908 - Network Science
Instructor: Joao Meidanis
Tuesdays and Thursdays, 7-9pm, Building IC-3, room 351. Check Schedule
First Semester, 2020
Overview
This is an introductory course on Network Science. We will closely follow Barabási's book, a classic in the field.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we switched to an asynchronous, remote model of education during the week of March 16th, 2020, that will last until the end of the term. The instructor will record pieces of lectures, based on slides, and make them available to students beforehand, together with the slides in PDF. Students can watch these pieces at their own convenience. During class, we will have a videoconference for comments, questions, and suggestions, but attendance will not be required.
For their own presentations, students will follow a similar course of action. They will produce videos with their presentations, based on the guidelines, and make them available to the instructor. Assingment hand-out and collection will be done by email.
Office hours
By appointment only.
Program and Schedule
| MO412A | Graph Algs. / Network Sci. | 1st. Term | |
| MC908A | Special Topics: Comp. Theory | 2020 | |
| Instructor: João Meidanis | |||
| PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE | Last Modified 2020-05-27 | ||
| Tu/Th | Date | Topic | Book Chapter |
| Tue | 03/03 | Course outline | |
| Thu | 03/05 | Introduction, Trailer, Animation | 1 |
| Tue | 03/10 | Graph Theory | 2 |
| Thu | 03/12 | Graph Theory | 2 |
| Tue | 03/17 | Planning Week | |
| Thu | 03/19 | Planning Week | |
| Tue | 03/24 | Graph Theory | 2 |
| Thu | 03/26 | Random Networks | 3 |
| Tue | 03/31 | Random Networks part3 part4 | 3 |
| Thu | 04/02 | The Scale-Free Property part 1 part 2 | 4 |
| Tue | 04/07 | Hand-out Assignment 1 | Homework 1-5 (15%) |
| Thu | 04/09 | Holiday: no class | Holiday: no class |
| Tue | 04/14 | The Scale-Free Property part 3 part 4 | 4 |
| Thu | 04/16 | The Barabási-Albert Model | 5 |
| Tue | 04/21 | Holiday: no class | Holiday: no class |
| Thu | 04/23 | The Barabási-Albert Model | 5 |
| Tue | 04/28 | Preliminary Project Presentations | |
| Thu | 04/30 | Hands-on Class er.py | Graph rep., Gephi, Python |
| Tue | 05/05 | Collect Assgn. 1; Hand-out Assgn. 2 | Class Network (15%) |
| Wed | 05/06 | Last day for MO412 drop requests | |
| Thu | 05/07 | Evolving Networks | 6 |
| Tue | 05/12 | Evolving Networks | 6 |
| Thu | 05/14 | Collect Assignment 2 | |
| Tue | 05/19 | Degree Correlations | 7 |
| Thu | 05/21 | Hand-out Assignment 3 | Homework 6-10 (15%) |
| Mon | 05/25 | Last day for enrollment suspension requests | |
| Tue | 05/26 | Holiday: no class | |
| Thu | 05/28 | Netw. Robustness; Hand-out Assgn.4 | 8; Wikipedia page (15%) |
| Tue | 06/02 | Network Robustness | 8 |
| Thu | 06/04 | Communities | 9 |
| Tue | 06/09 | Communities | 9 |
| Thu | 06/11 | Holiday: no class | Holiday: no class |
| Tue | 06/16 | Spreading Phenomena | 10 |
| Thu | 06/18 | Spreading Phenomena | 10 |
| Tue | 06/23 | Spreading Phenomena | 10 |
| Thu | 06/25 | Research Project Discussions | Collect Assignment 4 |
| Tue | 06/30 | Collect Assignment 3 | |
| Thu | 07/02 | Final Project Presentations | Final Project (40%) |
| Tue | 07/07 | Study week | |
| Thu | 07/09 | Study week | |
| Tue | 07/14 | Exam (undergraduates only) | |
| Thu | 07/16 |
Grading
Grading will be based on a number of Assignments and a Final Project. The Assignments are individual, but the Final Project is to be carried out by a group of 2 students, preferably with different backgrounds. If the number of students in the class is odd, we will allow one group with 3 members. The group will select a network of interest to them, map it out, and analyze it.
The Assignments are four in number. The first and third consist in solving some homework problems from the book. The second one consists in analyzing the class network, which will be given to all students at an appropriate time during the course. The last assignment consists of writing a Wikipedia page about a network-related topic. The page must not exist yet.
For the Final Project, the groups must present their work as a 10-minute presentation or video, describing the data, how it was collected, several measures about the network and insights gained by doing the analysis. The presentation / video must begin by stating the title, name of group members, their program, and the date.
There will be midterm Preliminary Project Presentations to help groups refine their plans. For these, groups must prepare 5-minute presentations, based on not more than 5 slides. Further guidelines about the Assignments / Final Project will be given during the course.
The contribution to the final grade is as follows:
| Assignment 1 (Homework 1) | 15% |
| Assignment 2 (Class Network) | 15% |
| Assignment 3 (Homework 2) | 15% |
| Assignment 4 (Wikipedia) | 15% |
| Final Project | 40% |
References
Network Science. Albert-László Barabási. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition. Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest and Clifford Stein. The MIT Press, 2009.
Algorithms, 4th Edition. Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2011.