Sessions at PyCon US 2012 about Social Network Analysis

Thursday 8th March 2012

• Social Network Analysis with Python

  by Maksim Tsvetovat

  Social Network data permeates our world -- yet we often don't know what to do with it. In this tutorial, I will introduce both theory and practice of Social Network Analysis -- gathering, analyzing and visualizing data using Python and other open-source tools. I will walk the attendees through an entire project, from gathering and cleaning data to presenting results.

  SNA techniques are derived from sociological and social-psychological theories and take into account the whole network (or, in case of very large networks such as Twitter -- a large segment of the network). Thus, we may arrive at results that may seem counter-intuitive -- e.g. that Justin Bieber (7.5 mil. followers) and Lady Gaga (7.2 mil. followers) have relatively little actual influence despite their celebrity status -- while a middle-of-the-road blogger with 30K followers is able to generate tweets that "go viral" and result in millions of impressions.

  In this tutorial, we will conduct social network analysis of a real dataset, from gathering and cleaning data to analysis and visualization of results. We will use Python and a set of open-source libraries, including NetworkX, NumPy and Matplotlib.

  Outline:

  • Introduction. Why should we do this? What is the data like? Why is this different from other techniques? What can we learn?
  • Centralities: Degree, closeness, betweenness, PageRank, Klout Score
  • Beyond Klout Score: Finding communities of interest, finding clusters in networks
  • Information diffusion in networks -- how do things go viral?
  • Python
  • Social Network Analysis

  At 9:00am to 12:20pm, Thursday 8th March

  In D3, Santa Clara Convention Center

  Coverage video