This course deals with computer science (CS) aspects of social network analysis (SNA), and is open to all students in the master computer science programme at Leiden University.
Lectures: Fridays from 9:00 to 10:45 in Gorlaeus lecture room BM1.33
Lab sessions: Fridays from 11:00 to 12:45 in Gorlaeus lab room DM0.09 an DM0.17
Prerequisites: a CS bachelor with courses on Algorithms, Data Structures and Data Mining
Literature: provided papers and book chapters (free and digitally available)
Examination: based on presentation, paper, programming, peer review and participation (no exam)
Brightspace link: 2526-S1 Social Network Analysis for Computer Scientists
Study guide link: Social Network Analysis for Computer Scientists
Study points: 6 ECTS
Course staff: dr. Frank Takes (f.w.takes@liacs.leidenuniv.nl, room BE 3.07), Rachel de Jong MSc (room BE 3.03)
Assistants:
Gamal Elgamal MSc (room BE 2.23),
Bart Holterman, Thanos Kalligeris and Bart Westhoff
Network with 1458 nodes and 1948 edges.
Date | Lecture (9:00-10:45) | Lab session (11:00-12:45) | ||
1. | Fri Sep 5, 2025 |
Lecture 0: Course information Lecture 1: Introduction and small world phenomenon |
Introduction to Gephi Work on Assignment 1 |
About social network analysis tools and packages. There exist different tools and packages for social network analysis. In this course, we coveR two of them, with complementary advantages:
Learning goals. The main goal of this lab session is to become familiar with Gephi (experimental beta-software to visualize networks for research purposes) and its input format. At the end of this session you should be able to:
There is no deliverable for this lab session, but you are assumed to know the tool afterwards. Practice more at home if needed.
Instructions:
Done? Get started with the practical part of Assignment 1. You can download the smaller datafiles medium.tsv and large.tsv. If you want to analyze huge.tsv, you will have to get it from the shared folder in the ISSC Linux or LIACS DS lab environment, as stated in the assignment.
Some students have expressed interest in additional reading material to help freshen up on skills and knowledge required for this course.