{"id":3354,"date":"2012-01-13T10:07:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T18:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/?p=3354"},"modified":"2016-04-22T17:15:54","modified_gmt":"2016-04-23T01:15:54","slug":"my-social-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/my-social-network\/","title":{"rendered":"Project 7: My Social Network"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Graphs\"<\/a>
My Social Network – Graph<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/h3>\n

AUTHORS:\u00a0 Bovril and Radiance<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

STATUS:Completed<\/h3>\n

This project is to develop a social network and submit it as a science fair project. The topics covered includes: social sciences (social network analysis), math (graph theory, statistics and matrix operations), and communication. Part of the objective will be to discover the alphas and cliques within a limited network of friends and acquaintances (no actual names will be used).<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/h3>\n

People are, by nature, social animals. \u00a0This is of such\u00a0importance\u00a0that their connections and\u00a0relationships, their social network, defines who they are. \u00a0Families, clubs, church groups and friend circles are examples of social networks. \u00a0In fact, any activity where people have to come together and do something as a group can become a social network.<\/p>\n

Recently, many websites have been created to utilise the social nature of humans. \u00a0For example: Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon.com and Ebay and even Schoology, allow people to<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. find each other<\/li>\n
  2. share ideas<\/li>\n
  3. share likes and\u00a0dislikes<\/li>\n
  4. share experiences and photos<\/li>\n
  5. allow business to market their products<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    and so many more.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    BACKGROUND<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    This project is about discovering the characteristics of a particular social circle – a small sample of students and how they connect with each other and about what they might like and how they could become friends through common interests (likes). \u00a0To be clear, none of their real names will be used in this experiment.<\/p>\n

    A graph is a mathematical concept made of vertices (nodes) and edges (relationships). \u00a0They can be fairly simple or extremely complex. \u00a0They have very interesting characteristics and are used in many different ways to model all kinds of things and their relationships. \u00a0They are extremely useful for solving many types of problems from traffic patterns to marketing strategy.<\/p>\n

    There’s a lot of material written about how social networks can be studied using the mathematics of graphs. \u00a0This has become a popular area of research today, as large social networks are being created and grown so rapidly.<\/p>\n

    OBJECTIVE<\/h3>\n

    Learn how graphs as a topic in mathematics can be used in social networks to discover interesting and useful information.<\/p>\n

    HYPOTHESIS<\/h3>\n

    Using social networks, can we find the cliques, friends and potential new friends through common likes? \u00a0Can we show that graphs are useful to help figure out these things?<\/p>\n

    TOOLS AND METHODS<\/h3>\n

    The tools we used included: a graph database software, spreadsheet and survey forms for collecting the data.<\/p>\n

    1. Design and build a model of a social\u00a0network using a graph.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Create students and activities (vertices)<\/li>\n
    2. Define relationship (edges)<\/li>\n
    3. Using a survey, add the students, their friends and their likes (what activities they like to do)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \"First<\/a>
      First Graph<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      2. Collect data using this questionnaire:\u00a0Survey Questionnaire<\/a>\u00a0and enter the data into the graph.\u00a0 We limit the survey to the level of friends of friends starting with us, in other words, 3 levels friendship so we have enough data but not enough to overwhelm us.\u00a0 We’re not trying to research the entire 6th grade class.<\/p>\n

      3. Using a spreadsheet we analyse the graph and find the simple degree centrality of the different students and\u00a0activities.\u00a0 Depending on the question we want to answer, we might use a modified degree centrality\u00a0\u00a0 to find the students who might have the most influence – the alpha.\u00a0 We’ll figure out how many connections they have, then sum the friendliness factors and multiply.\u00a0 The highest score will be the alpha.\u00a0 We’ll do the same thing to find the most popular activities (without the\u00a0friendliness factor).\u00a0 And we’ll just look at the graph to find any cliques (cycles).\u00a0 We’ll also just do simple matching of potential friends by looking at the graph and figuring out students who have many likes in common but are not yet friends.<\/p>\n

      EXPERIMENT<\/h3>\n

      Survey<\/strong><\/p>\n

      We collected data from 30 different students and build a graph of them and their friends. We were able to record a “friendliness”, a rating of their friendship from 1 to 5.\u00a0 We also got their likes of 8 different activities: volleyball, soccer, dance, swimming, drama, baseball and lacrosse.<\/p>\n

      \u00a0Analysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

      We ended up using a unique centrality, which we call the “Bovril-Radiance” \u00a0(B-R) centrality.\u00a0 It basically takes the average of the “friendliness” and multiplied it by a hundred.\u00a0 We used a thing called an adjacency matrix to figure out the B-R centrality.<\/p>\n

      My Social Network<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \"Final<\/a>
      Final Graph<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

      Likes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
      activity<\/strong><\/td>\n\u00a0degree centrality<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      volleyball<\/td>\n13<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      dance<\/td>\n9<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      soccer<\/td>\n6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      drama<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      baseball<\/td>\n3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      reading<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      swimming<\/td>\n1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
      lacrosse<\/td>\n1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

       <\/p>\n

      \u00a0CONCLUSION<\/h3>\n

      Using the “Bovril-Radiance” centrality, we were able to figure out who had the best friends.\u00a0 It turned out to be Bovril (120.0) with Radiance (74.3), Mint (57.1), Ornate (51.4) and Dolphin (54.3) in the top group.\u00a0 This suggests they were the most influential students in this group. \u00a0The results are a little bit not right because the researchers were part of the experiment, so they had a better opportunity for linking up their friends than the other\u00a0subjects. \u00a0If they are removed from the graph, the graph might be more realistic and not so heavily centered\u00a0around\u00a0Bovril.<\/p>\n

      We were also able to find the most popular activity.\u00a0 It was volleyball scored 13 while dance came in second at 9.\u00a0 Most likely, because so many students liked volleyball, they might be able to form friendship by their interest in volleyball.\u00a0 New friends might be able to form from these common interests, specially volleyball and dance.<\/p>\n

      REFERENCES<\/h3>\n
        \n
      1. Social Network Analysis – Wikipedia<\/a><\/li>\n
      2. Graph Theory Fun Quiz<\/a><\/li>\n
      3. More Fun Graph Stuff<\/a><\/li>\n
      4. Graphs<\/a><\/li>\n
      5. Graph Centrality<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        AUTHORS:\u00a0 Bovril and Radiance STATUS:Completed This project is to develop a social network and submit it as a science fair project. The topics covered includes: social sciences (social network analysis), math (graph theory, statistics and matrix operations), and communication. Part of the objective will be to discover the alphas and cliques within a limited network … Continue reading Project 7: My Social Network<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,6,3,28],"tags":[90,89,138,88,91,213,87,238],"class_list":["post-3354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6th-grade","category-projects","category-school","category-science-fair","tag-adjacency-matrix","tag-graphs","tag-math","tag-networks","tag-relationships","tag-science-project","tag-sna","tag-stem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3354"}],"version-history":[{"count":116,"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6618,"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3354\/revisions\/6618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mightyelephant.com\/ams\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}