CSC 467 Social Networks

This class will study how computers can be used to expedite the analysis of social networks. Examples of the social networks we will study are friendship networks (e.g., facebook), human contact networks, and the internet. These networks are frequently studied with an eye toward identifying key people, predicting how ideas or disease will spread, or, in the case of the internet, finding relevant information (e.g., Google web search). Naively applying computing techniques to study these networks, however, is often slow and expensive. Consequently, we will be focusing on how algorithms for studying social networks can be optimized for time and space effciency.