CS224W:
Social and Information Network Analysis
Autumn 2011

Course Information


Meeting Times and Locations

Tuesday & Thursday 9:30AM - 10:45AM in Gates B3

In the first two weeks of the class we will also hold 4 recitation sessions:


Tentative Course Schedule

Important Dates

Assignment/Work
Out on
Due on
Assignment #1
October 6
October 13
Reaction raper
--
October 20
Project proposal
--
October 27
Assignment #2
October 27
November 3
Assignment #3 / Competition
November 3
November 14
Project milestone
--
November 17
Project Write-up
--
December 11; Midnight (NO LATE DAYS)
Project poster presentation
--
December 16; 12:15-3:15pm

See FAQ for information on how to submit assignments and other work.

Course description

World Wide Web, blogging platforms, instant messaging and Facebook can be characterized by the interplay between rich information content, the millions of individuals and organizations who create and use it, and the technology that supports it.

The course will cover recent research on the structure and analysis of such large social and information networks and on models and algorithms that abstract their basic properties. Class will explore how to practically analyze large scale network data and how to reason about it through models for network structure and evolution.

Topics include methods for link analysis and network community detection, diffusion and information propagation on the web, virus outbreak detection in networks, and connections with work in the social sciences and economics.

Prerequisites

Students are expected to have the following background: The recitation sessions in the first weeks of the class will give the overview of the expected background.

Course materials

There is no official text for this course. Notes and reading assignments will be posted periodically on the course web site. The following books are recommended as optional reading:

Course handouts and other reading materials can be downloaded here.

Coursework

The coursework for the course will consist of:

Homeworks

The idea for the problem sets is to practice some skills that will be required for the project. The homeworks will contain written questions and questions that require some programming. Specifically, we will be working both on mathematical models of networks and analyzing real network data, for example, how to find stable sets in structural balance theory or how to optimally seed the network to maximize the influence. Second, we will also work with network datasets to get a flavor of types of questions one asks in network analysis. For example, using citation data create a small citation network, compute degree distributions, clustering coefficients, node centralities.

Questions: We try very hard to make questions unambiguous, but some ambiguities may remain. Ask (i.e., post a question on Piazza) if confused or state your assumptions explicitly. Reasonable assumptions will be accepted in case of ambiguous questions.

Honor code: We strongly encourage students to form study groups. Students may discuss and work on homework problems in groups. However, each student must write down the solutions independently, and without referring to written notes from the joint session. In other words, each student must understand the solution well enough in order to reconstruct it by him/herself. In addition, each student should write on the problem set the set of people with whom s/he collaborated.

Further, since we occasionally reuse problem set questions from previous years, we expect students not to copy, refer to, or look at the solutions in preparing their answers. It is an honor code violation to intentionally refer to a previous year's solutions. This applies both to the official solutions and to solutions that you or someone else may have written up in a previous year.

Late assignments: Each student will have a total of seven free late (calendar) days to use for homeworks, reaction papers, project proposals and project milestones. Once these late days are exhausted, any assignments turned in late will be penalized 20% per late day. However, no assignment will be accepted more than four days after its due date, and late days cannot be used for the final project writeup. Each 24 hours or part thereof that a homework is late uses up one full late day.

Assignment submission: To hand in an assignment, write down the date and time of submission, and leave it in the submission cabinet on 1st floor Gates building, near the east entrance. You can find a photo of it here. It is an honor code violation to write down the wrong time.

Regular (non-SCPD) students should submit hardcopies of assignments. Additional materials like source code should be submitted via assignment submission site. Please do not email your homework solutions to us.

If you are an SCPD student, you should submit all your files via assignment submission site.Then also send us an e-mail to the submissions e-mail: cs224w.fall11@gmail.com (Note: this is different from the normal staff e-mail @stanford.edu). Write "Assignment XXX Submission: SUNetID" on the Subject of the email, where XXX is one of the following: {HW1, HW2, Reaction, Proposal, Milestone, Final}. And SUNetID is your Stanford University Network ID. Do not attach the homework to the email.

Reaction paper

The course is based on material from the last few years. This means that most of it in form of research papers, which raise lot of interesting issues that have yet to be explored. The goal of the reaction paper is that students familiarize themselves more in depth with the material covered in class, do reading beyond what was covered in class.

Students can work in groups of up to 3 people on the reaction paper.

Students will pick at least two or three related papers where at least one has been mentioned in class or the book (see this and previuos year's course handouts) or any other paper clearly related to course topics (if in doubt check with curse staff about the papers you aim to read). Students should carefully read the papers and write a short approximately 3-5 pages reaction paper about the content of the chosen papers. You should be thinking beyond what you read, and not just take other people's work for granted. The reaction paper should address the following questions:

Reaction papers should not just be summaries of the papers you read. The last two bullets should form the most substantial part of the document. Answering these questions can be a very good way to explore a potential project topic. The reaction paper should be concluded with a section with a description of some promising further research directions and questions, and how could they be pursued. The reaction paper has to include at least some amount of each of the following two types of content:

In prior version of the course, the reaction paper has been a very good way to explore a potential project topic.

The idea of the reaction papers is: Examples of reaction papers:

Project

There can be three kinds of class projects:

Ideally, projects will be a mix of the three types of projects outlined above. For some useful project themes, go here. As with the reaction paper, the project should contain at least some amount of mathematical analysis, and some experimentation on real or synthetic data. You can also check 2009 student project reports and 2010 student project reports.

There are four deliverables (Click the respective deliverable to know more):

You can work in groups of 3 people on the project.

Student project reports from Fall 2009 class.

Student project reports from Fall 2010 class.

Project proposal

The project proposal should build on the reaction paper. The proposal should survey the related work and identify what are strengths and weaknesses of the papers and how they may be addressed. The proposal should then focus on what are some promising further research directions and questions. How precisely do you plan to pursue them? What methods/data do you plan to use? The proposal should contain at least some amount of each of the following two types of content:

When wring the proposal you should try to answer the following questions:

Some other points to note:

You can work in groups of up to 3 people on the project.

Here are some examples of past project proposals:

Project Milestone

Project Report

Course staff will use the following guidelines when grading your final project writeups. Keep in mind however, that if there is a good reason why your project doesn't match the rubric below, we will take that into consideration when grading your report. For example, we recognize that purely theoretical or data analysis projects may not fit the rubric below perfectly, and that depending on your project you may want swap the ordering of certain sections. But hopefully all projects can be roughly mapped to the criteria below.

Project Poster Presentation

See details here

Grading

The grading will be based:

Communication

General course questions should be posted Piazza.

Piazza requires @stanford.edu emaill address to register. If you do not have @stanford.edu address, send us email with your email address and we will register you.

If you need to reach the course staff, you can reach us at cs224w-aut1112-staff@lists.stanford.edu (consists of the TAs and the professor).