• UGEC2532

  • Social Network Analysis in Practice

E-mail
jwong@math.cuhk.edu.hk
Office
Lady Shaw Bldg 208
Phone extension
3943 - 7987
Lecturer's office hours
Please email me to arrange an appointment.
Course Information

Course Outline

This course provides an introduction to the quantitative and practical study of social networks. We will cover classic and contemporary studies, starting with fundamental definitions and models in layman terms, and then going through a range of topics, including models of network formation and structure (homophily, foci, communities), dynamic processes on networks (contagion, influence, disease models), social network-based knowledge discovery systems (affiliation, collaborative, personal, online networks), and network sampling and data collection in a data analytics approach. The course material is intended to be of interest to students from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including business, engineering, sociology, science, and related fields.

Text and References

Readinhg List: This will be updated during the academic year.

This is available at the CUHK library.

The text/reference should not be treated as a substitute for the lectures. The lectures may present the material covered in the text in a different manner, or deviate from it entirely. You should take your own notes in class.

Academic Offenses

The Chinese University of Hong Kong places very high importance on honesty in academic work submitted by students, and adopts a policy of zero tolerance on cheating and plagiarism. Any related offence will lead to disciplinary action including termination of studies at the University. For information on categories of offenses and types of penalties, students should consult the following link: .

Assessment

Your final letter-grade will be determined by your point Ranking viz. your final score (out of 100 points). The total score for your course grades is distributed as follows:

Homework Assignments
10% (Each 5%)
Take-Home Test
20%
from 6:00 pm, March 17, 2021 to 11:59 pm, March 18, 2021.
Class Participation
20%
1. Attendance + Class Discussion - 10%
2. Out-of-Class Participation - 10%
(There are eleven in-class activities; we will take the best eight in-class activity scores out of the eleven).
Project
50%
1. Presentation - 15%
2. Term Paper - 35%

Calendar

Important Dates

January 2021

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 - Lecture 1 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 - Lecture 2 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 - Lecture 3 28 29 30
31

February 2021

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1 2 3 - Lecture 4 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 - Lecture 5 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 - Lecture 6 25 26 27
28

March 2021

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1 2 3 - Lecture 7 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 - Lecture 8 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 - Lecture 9 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 - Lecture 10 25 26 27
28 29 30 31

April 2021

Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 - Presentation 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 - Presentation 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30

Homeworks

There will be three graded homework assignments.

Please note that you MUST do the whole homework entirely by yourself. In case of difficulty, you may consult the instructor and the tutors during their office hours. Any answers that show evidence of having been done with others will receive a score of zero; stronger action may also be taken (visit ). Don’t copy the work of others! Be neat, concise and well-organized.

Late homework answers will NOT be graded, and will receive a score of zero.

Please click the links below to download the homework.

2018 - 2019 Analyzing your affiliation networks at CUHK

Report on Analyzing your affiliation networks at CUHK can be found here.

Dear all participants,

Have you read the CUHK student society handbook 2016-2017? If you have not read it yet, please visit the link below:

Student Society Handbook (2016-2017) at CUHK

There are 70 student societies at CUHK. Each society has different functions throughout the year. In other words, there are 70 social groups that enable you to do some social networking and meet many interesting people during your stay/study at CUHK.

Survey

We sincerely invite you to do a survey below in order to create a social affiliation network between students and student societies and construct a community network!

To get a survey, please click here.

Goal

Our main goal is to look for you who are the most connected person who joins/serves many student societies. To determine which person is in the center of the network who seems to bridge the various groups, we need your help and time!

Reward

If you are the one, we will place your real name or nickname on this website if you grant us permission to do so. We also announce our interesting findings on the site!

Friend of a Friend

Please feel free to circulate this message among your classmates and friends at CUHK.

Please note that this is our first time conducting this survey so it may not include all the existing societies at CUHK. If you find any that are not on the list, please fill in the name (s) of your society (societies) inside the box.

Please be active and press a few buttons and join us in this fun game. The survey starts today and ends on April 7th, 2019.

We are very grateful for your precious time.

Thank you very much,

UGEC2532 Students & Jeff WONG

2017 - 2018 Local community detection

1. Use Google Maps to locate the residence where you live based on your district or pick a place that interests you. Your location will be considered as a local network. In other words, you need to set up an area that embraces a region that interests you.

2. Classify/group the local community:

People – e.g., shoppers who often visit places such as shopping malls, supermarkets, etc.

Places – e.g. parks where people often gather together for activities such as playing chess, practicing Tai Chi or Kung Fu, etc.

Different communities, e.g., shopping malls, supermarkets and parks, etc, can be defined as a set of nodes that more densely connected to each other than to the rest of network or have more communication between them.

3. How can these local communities interact with each other? Let us naively use a mobile phone to define an edge (or a channel) connecting two local communities. In other words, their social links are connected through the mobile phones of users.

4. Suppose you circulate a message through one of the local communities, how many people would really discuss any matter(s) you raise and extend your message from local community to local community? How fast would the message would get out?

The goal of this study is to understand the identification of users who are participating in this word of mouth activity.

Please answer the follow questions:

1. Name the district that interests you.

2. What is the message that you think is important to circulate and discuss? Please write no more than two sentences.

3. Let us define five different users with respect to each local community:

Sporadic. This kind of user visits a local community (a social network) from time to time, mainly to check if somebody has sent him/her a message.

Lurkers are the largest group, they do not create any content, but consume and spread the content created by other groups. They are also notable for their propensity for time-killing.

Socializers use local communities (or social networks) to communicate and make interesting comments about a discussion.

Debaters are a more mature and educated version of socializers. Less shallow than in the previous case, in addition to general communication, they are interested in the consumption and discussion of news and other information available in social networks.

Actives are engaged with all possible types of activity: communication, reading, creating, watching, and establishing groups. They are very critical about a subject. Almost all users can fit inside this category.

Your observations are: Can you find/group these people in real-life? Please name them.

Thank you very much,

Jeff WONG

2016 - 2017 Small world phenomenon at CUHK

Dear all participants,

This is Jeff WONG.

We are conducting and retesting the small world phenomenon on a local scale, using e-mails. We will provide you with the target information, e.g., the target’s full name and nickname, gender, a few characteristic features of the target’s complexion, and the target’s e-mail address.

The simple rule is:

From everyone to friends of friends to the target, we will find the target using emails via Gmail without directly looking the target up. You must forward the email message to someone he or she knows and who will able to get the chain closer to the target. The chain continues in this manner until the target is reached.

How many links would it take to connect from you to the target using e-mails?

Besides finding the average number of steps required to complete a chain, our study goal is to obtain knowledge about how social networks and friendship patterns are created and formed. Please be active and press a few buttons and join us in this fun game.

To reach the target, please use the following procedure

1. Please send all the email messages to the following Gmail address:

ugec2532@gmail.com

2.

a. If you know the target, please forward the email message to him/her and cc ugec2532@gmail.com.

b. If not, please cc us when you forward the email message to someone he or she knows and who will able to get the chain closer to the target.

3. The chain continues in this manner until the target is reached.

We are very grateful for your precious time.

Thank you very much,

UGEC2532 Students & Jeff WONG

Lecture Notes

Once you have enrolled your course, we will send you a username and password to access your online learning resources.

Please click the link below to download the lecture notes.

Jeff Chak-Fu WONG, Department of Mathematics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong.