The Science of Social Networks

or, how I almost know a lot of famous people

Kentaro Toyama
Microsoft Research India

Indian Institute of Science September 19, 2005

Outline

Small Worlds

Random Graphs

Alpha and Beta

Power Laws

Searchable Networks

Six Degrees of Separation

Outline

Small Worlds

Random Graphs

Alpha and Beta

Power Laws

Searchable Networks

Six Degrees of Separation

Trying to make friends

Kentaro
Trying to make friends
Microsoft Bash

Kentaro
Trying to make friends
Microsoft Bash Asha
Kentaro Ranjeet
Trying to make friends
Microsoft Bash Asha
Kentaro Ranjeet
Yale Sharad New York City

Ranjeet and I already had a friend in common!

I didn’t have to worry…
Bash

Kentaro
Sharad

Anandan

Venkie

Karishma

Maithreyi
Soumya
It’s a small world after all!
Bash

Kentaro Ranjeet
Sharad
Prof. McDermott
Anandan Prof. Sastry
Prof. Prof. Veni
Prof. Balki
Venkie Kannan Ravi’s
Father
Karishma Ravi
Prof. Prahalad Pres. Kalam
Maithreyi Pawan
Prof. Jhunjhunwala
Soumya Aishwarya PM Manmohan
Dr. Isher Judge
Amitabh Singh
Ahluwalia
Nandana Bachchan Prof. Amartya Dr. Montek Singh
Sen Sen Ahluwalia
Society as a Graph
People are represented as
nodes.
Society as a Graph
People are represented as
nodes.

Relationships are
represented as edges.

(Relationships may be
acquaintanceship, friendship,
co-authorship, etc.)
Society as a Graph
People are represented as
nodes.

Relationships are
represented as edges.

(Relationships may be
acquaintanceship, friendship,
co-authorship, etc.)

Allows analysis using tools of

mathematical graph theory
The Kevin Bacon Game
Invented by Albright College
students in 1994:
– Craig Fass, Brian Turtle, Mike
Ginelly

Goal: Connect any actor to Kevin

Bacon, by linking actors who
have acted in the same movie.

Oracle of Bacon website uses

Internet Movie Database
(IMDB.com) to find shortest link
between any two actors:
Boxed version of the
Kevin Bacon Game http://oracleofbacon.org/
The Kevin Bacon Game
An Example

Kevin Bacon
Mystic River (2003)

Tim Robbins
Code 46 (2003)

Om Puri
Yuva (2004)

Rani Mukherjee
Black (2005)

Amitabh Bachchan
The Kevin Bacon Game
Total # of actors in
database: ~550,000

Average path length to

Kevin: 2.79

Actor closest to “center”:

Rod Steiger (2.53)

Rank of Kevin, in closeness

to center: 876th

Most actors are within three Center of Hollywood?

links of each other!
Not Quite the Kevin Bacon Game

Kevin Bacon
Cavedweller (2004)

Aidan Quinn
Looking for Richard (1996)

Kevin Spacey
Bringing Down the House (2004)

Ben Mezrich
Roommates in college (1991)

Kentaro Toyama
Erdős Number
Number of links required to connect
scholars to Erdős, via co-
authorship of papers

Erdős wrote 1500+ papers with 507

co-authors.

Jerry Grossman’s (Oakland Univ.)

website allows mathematicians
to compute their Erdos numbers:

http://www.oakland.edu/enp/

Paul Erdős (1913-1996) Connecting path lengths, among

mathematicians only:
– average is 4.65
– maximum is 13
Erdős Number
An Example

Paul Erdős
Alon, N., P. Erdos, D. Gunderson and M. Molloy (2002). On a Ramsey-type Problem. J.
Graph Th. 40, 120-129.
Mike Molloy
Achlioptas, D. and M. Molloy (1999). Almost All Graphs with 2.522 n Edges are not 3-
Colourable. Electronic J. Comb. (6), R29.
Dimitris Achlioptas
Achlioptas, D., F. McSherry and B. Schoelkopf. Sampling Techniques for Kernel Methods.
NIPS 2001, pages 335-342.
Bernard Schoelkopf
Romdhani, S., P. Torr, B. Schoelkopf, and A. Blake (2001). Computationally efficient face
detection. In Proc. Int’l. Conf. Computer Vision, pp. 695-700.
Andrew Blake
Toyama, K. and A. Blake (2002). Probabilistic tracking with exemplars in a metric space.
International Journal of Computer Vision. 48(1):9-19.
Kentaro Toyama
Outline

Small Worlds

Random Graphs

Alpha and Beta

Power Laws

Searchable Networks

Six Degrees of Separation

 N = 12

Random Graphs
Erdős and Renyi (1959)
p = 0.0 ; k = 0

N nodes

A pair of nodes has

probability p of being
connected.
p = 0.09 ; k = 1

Average degree, k ≈ pN

What interesting things can

be said for different values
of p or k ? p = 1.0 ; k ≈ ½N2
(that are true as N  ∞)
Random Graphs
Erdős and Renyi (1959)
p = 0.0 ; k = 0

p = 0.09 ; k = 1

p = 0.045 ; k = 0.5

Let’s look at…

Size of the largest connected cluster
p = 1.0 ; k ≈ ½N2
Diameter (maximum path length between nodes) of the largest cluster
Average path length between nodes (if a path exists)
 Random Graphs
Erdős and Renyi (1959)

p = 0.0 ; k = 0 p = 0.045 ; k = 0.5 p = 0.09 ; k = 1 p = 1.0 ; k ≈ ½N2

Size of largest component

1 5 11 12
Diameter of largest component
0 4 7 1
Average path length between nodes
0.0 2.0 4.2 1.0
Random Graphs
Erdős and Renyi (1959)

Diameter of largest component (not to scale)

Percentage of nodes in largest component
If k < 1:
– small, isolated clusters
– small diameters
– short path lengths 1.0

At k = 1:
– a giant component appears
– diameter peaks
– path lengths are high

0
For k > 1: 1.0 k
– almost all nodes connected
– diameter shrinks
– path lengths shorten phase transition
Random Graphs David
Mumford Peter
Kentaro
Toyama
Erdős and Renyi (1959) Belhumeur
Fan
Chung

What does this mean?

• If connections between people can be modeled as a

random graph, then…

– Because the average person easily knows more than one

person (k >> 1),

– We live in a “small world” where within a few links, we are

connected to anyone in the world.

– Erdős and Renyi showed that average ln N

path length between connected nodes is
ln k
Random Graphs David
Mumford Peter
Kentaro
Toyama
Erdős and Renyi (1959) Belhumeur
Fan
Chung

What does this mean?

BIG “IF”!!!
• If connections between people can be modeled as a
random graph, then…

– Because the average person easily knows more than one

person (k >> 1),

– We live in a “small world” where within a few links, we are

connected to anyone in the world.

– Erdős and Renyi computed average ln N

path length between connected nodes to be:
ln k
Outline

Small Worlds

Random Graphs

Alpha and Beta

Power Laws

Searchable Networks

Six Degrees of Separation

The Alpha Model
Watts (1999)

The people you know aren’t

randomly chosen.

People tend to get to know those

who are two links away
(Rapoport *, 1957).

The Personal Map

The real world exhibits a lot of by MSR Redmond’s Social Computing Group
clustering.

* Same Anatol Rapoport, known for TIT FOR TAT!

The Alpha Model
Watts (1999)

α model: Add edges to nodes, as

in random graphs, but makes
links more likely when two
nodes have a common friend.

For a range of α values:

– The world is small (average

Probability of linkage as a function path length is short), and
of number of mutual friends
(α is 0 in upper left,
1 in diagonal,
– Groups tend to form (high
and ∞ in bottom right curves.) clustering coefficient).
The Alpha Model
Watts (1999)

α model: Add edges to nodes, as

in random graphs, but makes
Normalized path length

links more likely when two

Clustering coefficient /

nodes have a common friend.

For a range of α values:

– The world is small (average

Clustering coefficient (C) and path length is short), and
average path length (L)
plotted against α – Groups tend to form (high
clustering coefficient).

α
The Beta Model
Watts and Strogatz (1998)

β=0 β = 0.125 β=1

People know People know People know

their neighbors. their neighbors, others at
and a few distant people. random.

Clustered, but Clustered and Not clustered,

not a “small world” “small world” but “small world”
The Beta Model Jonathan
Donner
Kentaro
Toyama
Watts and Strogatz (1998) Nobuyuki
Hanaki

First five random links reduce the

average path length of the
network by half, regardless of N!

Normalized path length

Clustering coefficient /
Both α and β models reproduce
short-path results of random
graphs, but also allow for
clustering.

Small-world phenomena occur at Clustering coefficient (C) and average

threshold between order and path length (L) plotted against β
chaos.
Outline

Small Worlds

Random Graphs

Alpha and Beta

Power Laws

Searchable Networks

Six Degrees of Separation

Power Laws
Albert and Barabasi (1999)

What’s the degree (number of

edges) distribution over a graph,
for real-world graphs?

Random-graph model results in

Poisson distribution.

Degree distribution of a random graph,

N = 10,000 p = 0.0015 k = 15. But, many real-world networks
(Curve is a Poisson curve, for comparison.)
exhibit a power-law distribution.
Power Laws
Albert and Barabasi (1999)

What’s the degree (number of

edges) distribution over a graph,
for real-world graphs?

Random-graph model results in

Poisson distribution.

Typical shape of a power-law distribution.

But, many real-world networks
exhibit a power-law distribution.
Power Laws
Albert and Barabasi (1999)

Power-law distributions are straight

lines in log-log space.

How should random graphs be

generated to create a power-law
distribution of node degrees?
Power laws in real networks:
Hint: (a) WWW hyperlinks
(b) co-starring in movies
Pareto’s* Law: Wealth (c) co-authorship of physicists
distribution follows a power law. (d) co-authorship of neuroscientists

* Same Velfredo Pareto, who defined Pareto optimality in game theory.

Power Laws Anandan
Kentaro
Toyama
Albert and Barabasi (1999) Jennifer
Chayes

“The rich get richer!”

Power-law distribution of node

distribution arises if
– Number of nodes grow;
– Edges are added in proportion to
the number of edges a node
already has.

“Map of the Internet” poster Additional variable fitness coefficient

allows for some nodes to grow
faster than others.
Outline

Small Worlds

Random Graphs

Alpha and Beta

Power Laws

Searchable Networks

Six Degrees of Separation

Searchable Networks
Kleinberg (2000)

Just because a short path exists,

doesn’t mean you can easily
find it.

You don’t know all of the people

whom your friends know.

Under what conditions is a network

searchable?
Searchable Networks
Kleinberg (2000)

• Variation of Watts’s β model:

– Lattice is d-dimensional (d=2).
– One random link per node.
– Parameter α controls probability of random link
– greater for closer nodes.

b) For d=2, dip in time-to-search at α=2

– For low α, random graph; no “geographic”
correlation in links
– For high α, not a small world; no short paths to
be found.

• Searchability dips at α=2, in simulation

Searchable Networks Kentaro
Toyama
Kleinberg (2000) Ramin
Zabih

Watts, Dodds, Newman (2002)

show that for d = 2 or 3, real
networks are quite searchable.

Killworth and Bernard (1978) found

that people tended to search
their networks by d = 2: The Watts-Dodds-Newman model
geography and profession. closely fitting a real-world experiment
Outline

Small Worlds

Random Graphs

Alpha and Beta

Power Laws

Searchable Networks

Six Degrees of Separation

Applications of Network Theory
• World Wide Web and hyperlink structure
• The Internet and router connectivity
• Collaborations among…
– Movie actors
– Scientists and mathematicians
• Sexual interaction
• Cellular networks in biology
• Food webs in ecology
• Phone call patterns
• Word co-occurrence in text
• Neural network connectivity of flatworms
• Conformational states in protein folding
Credits

Albert, Reka and A.-L. Barabasi. “Statistical mechanics of complex

networks.” Reviews of Modern Physics, 74(1):47-94. (2002)

Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked. Plume Publishing. (2003)

Kleinberg, Jon M. “Navigation in a small world.” Science, 406:845.

(2000)

Watts, Duncan. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. W.

W. Norton & Co. (2003)
Six Degrees of Separation
Milgram (1967)

The experiment:

• Random people from Nebraska

were to send a letter (via
intermediaries) to a stock broker in
Boston.

• Could only send to someone with

whom they were on a first-name
basis.

Among the letters that found the

target, the average number of Stanley Milgram (1933-1984)
links was six.
Six Degrees of Separation Kentaro
Toyama
Milgram (1967) Allan Robert
Mike
Wagner ? Sternberg
Tarr

John Guare wrote a play called Six

Degrees of Separation, based
on this concept.

“Everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of
separation. Between us and everybody else on this planet. The president of the United
States. A gondolier in Venice… It’s not just the big names. It’s anyone. A native in a
rain forest. A Tierra del Fuegan. An Eskimo. I am bound to everyone on this planet by
a trail of six people…”
Thank you!