Networks: An Introduction

The scientific study of networks, including computer networks, social networks, and biological networks, has received an enormous amount of interest in the last few years. The rise of the Internet and the wide availability of inexpensive computers have made it possible to gather and analyze network data on a large scale, and the development of a variety of new theoretical tools has allowed us to extract new knowledge from many different kinds of networks.

The study of networks is broadly interdisciplinary and important developments have occurred in many fields, including mathematics, physics, computer and information sciences, biology, and the social sciences. This book brings together for the first time the most important breakthroughs in each of these fields and presents them in a coherent fashion, highlighting the strong interconnections between work in different areas.

Subjects covered include the measurement and structure of networks in many branches of science, methods for analyzing network data, including methods developed in physics, statistics, and sociology, the fundamentals of graph theory, computer algorithms, and spectral methods, mathematical models of networks, including random graph models and generative models, and theories of dynamical processes taking place on networks.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Part I: The Empirical Study Of Networks
Chapter 2: Technological Networks
Chapter 3: Social Networks
Chapter 4: Networks Of Information
Chapter 5: Biological Networks

Part II: Fundamentals Of Network Theory
Chapter 6: Mathematics Of Networks
Chapter 7: Measures And Metrics
Chapter 8 The Large-Scale Structure Of Networks

Part III: Computer Algorithms
Chapter 9: Basic Concepts Of Algorithms
Chapter 10: Fundamental Network Algorithms
Chapter 11: Matrix Algorithms And Graph Partitioning

Part IV: Network Models
Chapter 12: Random Graphs
Chapter 13: Random Graphs With General Degree Distributions
Chapter 14: Models Of Network Formation
Chapter 15: Other Network Models

Part V: Processes On Networks
Chapter 16: Percolation And Network Resilience
Chapter 17: Epidemics On Networks
Chapter 18: Dynamical Systems On Networks
Chapter 19: Network Search