Prof. Nagurney selected as Radcliffe Institute fellow

Professor Nagurney's Radcliffe Institute Fellowship was recently announced. Prof. Nagurney was a keynote speaker at Meshforum 2005.

We extend our congratulations to Prof. Nagurney and wish her great success in 2005-2006 as she joins 50 other fellows in doing advanced research at Harvard.

Pollard on SNA: What to Map

Dave Pollard talks about Social Network Analysis: What to Map after reading Cross and Parker's The Hidden Power of Social Networks.  He also refers to our friend, Valdis Krebs.

What could you do with this information? Imagine you could recast the SNA map at the top of this article with a second map that showed the perceived quality of information transfer (each way) between you and others in your network, and a third map that showed the perceived degree of trust (each way) between you and others in your network? If the perceptions each way, or between the three maps, were markedly different, this could be startling and potentially very useful knowledge. Unlike the authors of The Hidden Power of Social Networks, however, I think in the hands of management it would be dangerous, disruptive, and perhaps even abusive. But suppose the perceptions of you by others (how 'well' you do in each of the 16 qualitative attributes above) was available exclusively and privately to you? This, I believe, could be astonishingly valuable as a self-assessment tool. 

SNA used to capture Saddam Hussein

Bruce Hoppe points to some interesting SNA used to capture Saddam Hussein

Many thanks to David Koelle at Charles River Analytics for sharing this headline with me: "Sociological skills used in the capture of Saddam Hussein." (Published just last month in Footnotes, the newsletter of the American Sociological Association.)

The article profiles the impressive work of of Major Brian J. Reed: "He reports using a layered social network analysis to locate Hussein prior to his capture. 'The intelligence background and link diagrams that we built were rooted in the concepts of network analysis. We constructed an elaborate product that traced the tribal and family linkages of Saddam Hussein thereby allowing us to focus on certain individuals who may have had (or presently had) close ties to [him],' said Reed."

Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation

Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation

Existing theories of a particular subject matter are typically revised and adjusted to reflect changing environments. At some point, due to continual revisions, the theories becomes so dichotomous and complex that it is no longer reflective of the subject it is intended to define and explain. At this point, the existing theories need to be replaced with models that more accurately reflect the link between theory and reality. The domain of learning is significantly hampered by progressive revisions of what it means to learn, to know, and to understand. A subset of connectivism, network forming, is presented as an accurate model for addressing how people learn. The test of any theory is the degree to which it solves problems and incongruities within a domain. The shortcomings of behaviourist, cognitivist, and constructivist ideologies of learning are answered in light of learning as a connection-forming (network-creation) process.

CACM: Criminal Network Analysis and Visualization

There is an article in the June 2005 Communications of the ACM on Criminal Network Analysis and Visualization by Jennifer Xu and Hsinchun Chen of the AI lab at the Eller College of Management at The University of Arizona.  Their AI lab website includes demos of their COPLINK that is their analysis tool.  The paper makes reference to Valdis Krebs' analysis of the hijackers' network.