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Visualizing evolving networks: minimum spanning trees versus Pathfinder networks
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/1860/1959
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| Title: | Visualizing evolving networks: minimum spanning trees versus Pathfinder networks |
| Authors: | Chen, Chaomei
Morris, Steven |
| Keywords: | Network Evolution
Network Visualization
Co-Citation Networks
Pathfinder Networks
Minimum Spanning Trees |
| Issue Date: | 19-Oct-2003 |
| Publisher: | IEEE Computer Society Press |
| Citation: | Paper presented at the Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, 2003, Seattle, Washington. |
| Abstract: | Network evolution is a ubiquitous phenomenon in a wide variety
of complex systems. There is an increasing interest in statistically
modeling the evolution of complex networks such as small-world
networks and scale-free networks. In this article, we address a
practical issue concerning the visualization of network evolution.
We compare the visualizations of co-citation networks of
scientific publications derived by two widely known link
reduction algorithms, namely minimum spanning trees (MSTs)
and Pathfinder networks (PFNETs). Our primarily goal is to
identify the strengths and weaknesses of the two methods in
fulfilling the need for visualizing evolving networks. Two criteria
are derived for assessing visualizations of evolving networks in
terms of topological properties and dynamical properties. We
examine the animated visualization models of the evolution of
botulinum toxin research in terms of its co-citation structure
across a 58-year span (1945-2002). The results suggest that
although high-degree nodes dominate the structure of MST
models, such structures can be inadequate in depicting the essence
of how the network evolves because MST removes potentially
significant links from high-order shortest paths. In contrast,
PFNET models clearly demonstrate their superiority in
maintaining the cohesiveness of some of the most pivotal paths,
which in turn make the growth animation more predictable and
interpretable. We suggest that the design of visualization and
modeling tools for network evolution should take the
cohesiveness of critical paths into account. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1860/1959 |
| Appears in Collections: | Faculty Research and Publications (IST)
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