Complex Network Analysis in Python

Start with Global Measures

Let’s start with a “black box” view of a complex network. Let’s pretend we are at a distance and instead of nodes, edges, and their attributes, we see a fuzzy grayish cloud. What can we tell about that cloud? Not much: only its size and density.

To be specific, in this chapter, we will experiment with the network of CNA-related Wikipedia pages constructed in Chapter 5, ​Case Study: Constructing a Network of Wikipedia Pages​ and available in the file cna.graphml.^[33]

The size of a network is either its node count or edge count. You can measure both using the standard Python len function and other specialized functions.

len(G) # Number of nodes
len(G.node)
len(G.nodes)
len(G.nodes())
nx.number_of_nodes(G) ...