Post 4a: Analysing the web – Mathematical approaches

Note: This post is a work-in-progress! It’s currently more of a notes page and will be added to and rewritten over time. Watch this space!

Graph theory
– Graph topology
– Random graphs
– Small worlds
– Scale-free graphs
– Graphs and combinatorics
– Probability statistics

Networks
– Web mining
– Social network analysis
– Network sampling
– Network inference

Game theory

Power laws

Statistics and regression analysis

Tools

Webometric Analyst, free web link crawling software from the University of Wolverhampton (PC only – doesn’t work on Macs).

Reading list

Easley, D. and Kleinberg, J. (2010) Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press.

Wasserman, S. and Faust, K. (1994) Social network analysis:
methods and applications. Cambridge University Press.

Thelwall, M. (2009). Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative Web Research for the Social Sciences. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool (Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, 2009, Vol. 1, No. 1).