Data structures home practice

Our goal is to represent a small data set of your choosing using a graph, a table, and a "flat" text file which can be ingested by any number of data tools. The final deliverable will be a graphical depiction of the graph (either hand drawn or computer generated), a digital representation of the data in tabular format, and a .csv file containing the "raw" data.

Draw on the following list of steps as you find useful in carrying out this task:

  1. Choose an existing data set or generate your own set of networked data, such as the relationship between people in an organization to which you are affiliated, or the relationship among entities within a domain of your choosing. Some ideas might include: a famous film director and the actors/actresses he/she has worked with over time. Professional athletes and their relationship to other teams, players, and sports.
  2. On a regular old sheet of paper, sketch out some of the most important relationships between entities. Put entities in circles, and connect them with lines. Start labeling the lines with words describing that relationship, such as "plays for" or "acted with". Don't get carried away just yet; a set of 5-8 key entities is plenty.
  3. Drawing on our in-class practice, create a data table in which each entity is allocated to one row AND one column such that we can create directed or undirected graphs. If your connections between entities are all the same, you can mark the intersection between related entities with a single "1" in the cell. If the relationship are of a certain type, create a key for the types and their symbol. For example, if you are showing relationships betwen sports players, a "plays with" relationship might get coded a "P" versus a "previous player" is marked with a "R". You could also decide to try to weight the connections somehow, such as by a scale (1 meaning a weak connection, 100 being the closest possible connection, etc.)
  4. Finally, transfer your data table you made by hand into a spreadsheet, probably using a tool like MS Excel or Libre Office Calc. In one sheet, please generate your data table and in a second sheet (i.e. a tab) describe what your data table is encoding.
  5. With the spreadsheet created, attemp an export of the data in a text format. Directions for MS excel and Libre Office Calc
  6. Take a photo or scan your hand-drawn network diagram for upload to our shared server. If you'd like you can digitize the network graph using a computer tool such as draw.io which is in the google drive suite of tools
  7. With all your representations complete, open our shared upload directory on MS OneDrive. Create a new directory named with your first name and the topic of your data.
  8. Inside that directory, please upload all your related files: the image of the graph, the spreadsheet version, and the text export.
  9. Extension: Download and run the network graph creator called Gephi.. Read through its documentation and attempt to encode your network graph. We won't have time to dig into this file