I would like to (re)announce the workshop I will be giving on using R and ‘igraph’ for Social Network Analysis on the upcoming Sunbelt 2016 conference in Newport Beach. My goal is to provide gentle and practical tour through the SNA functionality of R package “igraph”. The exact date of the Sunbelt workshop is Tuesday April 5th, 8:00am – 2:30pm. Consult the Sunbelt workshop program or further details.

Do note that March 7 is the deadline for Sunbelt workshop registrations!

If you are not attending Sunbelt I will be very happy to meet you on the workshop at the European Social Networks Conference (EUSN 2016) which will take place in Paris (14-17th of June, 2016), see http://eusn2016.sciencesconf.org/84811 for further details.

See the bottom of this post for some more details on the workshop.

I hope to see you on Sunbelt or EUSN!

As a side note, on EUSN I will be also co-teaching two ‘statnet’ workshops which will be announced separately.

Using R and igraph for Social Network Analysis

The workshop introduces R and package igraph for social network data manipulation, isualization, and analysis. Package igraph is a collection of efficient tools for storing, manipulating, visualizing, and analyzing network data. Igraph is in part an alternative, in part a complement to other SNA-related R packages (e.g. statnet, tnet). It is an alternative as it goes for network data manipulation and visualization. It is a complement because of a large and growing collection of algorithms, including community detection problems, unavailable elsewhere. The material will cover:

1. Brief introduction to R.
2. Creating and manipulating network data objects.
3. Working with node and tie attributes.
4. Creating network visualizations.
5. A tour through computing selected SNA methods including: degree distribution, centrality measures, shortest paths, connected components, quantifying homophily/segregation, network community detection.
6. Connections to other R packages for SNA, e.g.: statnet, RSiena, egonetR.

The focus is on analysis of complete network data and providing prerequisites for other workshops including two on ego-network analysis: “Introduction to ego-network analysis” by Raffaele Vacca and “Simplifying advanced ego-network analysis in R with egonetR” by Till Krenz and Andreas Herz.

The workshop have been successfully organized on earlier Sunbelt conferences (since Sunbelt 2011) and on European Social Networks conference (EUSN 2014). The workshop attracted a lot of attention (total of over 130 participants since 2011) and positive feedback (80% report being satisfied, 75% would recommend the workshop to a colleague). The earlier workshop title was “Introduction to Social Network Analysis with R”. The content have been updated to catch up with newest developments in igraph and related packages.

Target audience and requirements:

The workshop is designed to be accessible for people who have limited experience with R. The participants are expected to be familiar with basic R objects (e.g. matrices and data frames) and functions (e.g., reading data, computing basic statistics, basic visualization). Some brief introduction to R will be provided. To be absolutely on the safe side we recommend taking an internet course on the level of R programming course on Coursera (https://www.coursera.org/course/rprog), which you can take every month, or skimming through a book on the level of initial eight sections of Roger D. Peng book “R programming” (https://leanpub.com/rprogramming). Participants are encouraged to bring own laptops. We have prepared examples and exercises to be completed during the workshop. Detailed instructions about how to prepare will be distributed in due time.