Network Size Analysis

In this exercise, we will explore some basic characteristics of social networks using the Moreno dataset. We will focus on understanding the size of the network, which is a fundamental aspect of network analysis.

Loading the Dataset

First, we need to load the Moreno dataset. The Moreno dataset is contained in the UserNetR package, so make sure you have installed (see previous page). The data can be loaded using the data() function in R:

data(Moreno)

Visualizing the Network

Once the dataset is loaded, we can visualize the network to get a basic understanding of its structure. In the following code, we color the nodes based on gender for better differentiation:

gender <- Moreno %v% "gender"
plot(Moreno, vertex.col = gender + 2, vertex.cex = 1.2)

plot

Don’t worry if you don’t understand every line of code at this point. The details will become clearer as we progress through the exercises.

Network Size

To determine the size of the network, we can use the network.size() function. This function returns the number of nodes in the network:

network.size(Moreno)

[1] 33

Number of Edges

To determine the number of edges in the network, we can use the network.edgecount() function.

network.edgecount(Moreno)

[1] 46

Additional Network Information

For more detailed information about the network, we can use the summary() function. This function provides a comprehensive overview of the network, including the number of vertices and edges, network density, and attributes of vertices and edges:

summary(Moreno, print.adj=FALSE)

Network attributes:
  vertices = 33
  directed = FALSE
  hyper = FALSE
  loops = FALSE
  multiple = FALSE
  bipartite = FALSE
 total edges = 46 
   missing edges = 0 
   non-missing edges = 46 
 density = 0.08712121 

Vertex attributes:

 gender:
   numeric valued attribute
   attribute summary:
   Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
  1.000   1.000   2.000   1.515   2.000   2.000 
  vertex.names:
   character valued attribute
   33 valid vertex names

No edge attributes

Using the igraph Package The previous sections used the network package because the Moreno dataset is a network object. However, if you’re using the igraph package, you can use the vcount() function to get the number of vertices and the ecount() function to get the number of edges.

Exercise

Obtain the number of edges in the facebook dataset and store this amount in n_edges.

To download the facebook dataset click: here1

Assume that: