Social Network Analysis (Lecture 7,8 and 9)

Mathematics again... I already forgot how to calculate matrices. Time to have some revisions on mathematics.

After Lecture 7 and Lecture 8, I have learnt the definition of Social Network Analysis and the terminology. Also, the formulas for calculating different types of centrality.

Before lecture 9, I do not have any idea in what application can make use of social network analysis. It is not much information about SNA application on the internet. I only know that the Sociogram can illustrate the relationship between every people in a social network and we can use a matrix to represent the Sociogram and calculate the centrality of the social network.

After Lecture 9, I have learnt the calculation about Prestige. Also, I have learnt some applications about SNA, which are PageRank and HITS.

I have installed the PageRank plugin for my Chrome web browser, It shows the PageRank status of a website.

http://pagerank.chromefans.org/pagerank-checker/

The below description is quote from above website:

"PageRank (PR) is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google search engine. It's a numeric value (0-10) that represents how important a page is on the web."


I have checked Facebook, CUHK, Google and Yahoo HK's PageRank:


Facebook and Google's PageRank are 9

While CUHK's PageRank is 7

Yahoo HK's PageRank is 3. It is funny to see Yahoo HK's PageRank is lower than most of the websites which I often visit. (Because of Yahoo = Google's competitor ??? I don't think so. To me, I can get the best search result from Google rather than Yahoo. I rarely visit Yahoo in these years. So I think it is possible for Yahoo to have such low PageRank)

When I visit Wikipedia about PageRank, I found that there is an hyperlink about another interesting algorithm, which the algorithm is EigenTrust:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EigenTrust

The below text is quote from the above website:

"EigenTrust algorithm is a reputation management algorithm for peer-to-peer networks, developed by Sep Kamvar, Mario Schlosser, and Hector Garcia-Molina. The algorithm provides each peer in the network a unique global trust value based on the peer's history of uploads and thus aims to reduce the number of inauthentic files in a P2P network."

The idea is similar to the algorithms which I've learnt in the lectures.

Communication and Social Behaviors on Internet (Lecture 5 and Lecture 6)

The epistemic arms in Class Activity One is

• Understanding
• To acquire true

The epistemic arms in Class Activity Two is

• To avoid false beliefs
• Justify beliefs by referring other group member's beliefs
• To acquire true

I am changed my epistemic aim. In the Class Activity One, I can only do it by myself, so I need to read the whole article, digest it and then find out the answer. In the Class Activity Two, I can see other group member's idea. such that, I have more confidence about my answer's correctness by seeing same answer written by other group members. Also, I can get more information by seeing different group member's idea.

In terms of individual epistemic cognition, knowledge can only be acquired by learning individually, while in terms of group epistemic cognition, knowledge can be built together in a social environment.

When I approach to the problem individually, I need to find out the answer by myself, that's only cognitive processes. While I approach to the problem in group, I can discuss with other people and share my idea to other people, in which the actions involved other three process of Knowledge formation. (Process of formal inquiry, interpersonal processes and community and institutional process)


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In lecture 5, I have learnt the definition and characteristic of psychology group and different types of communication networks. Also, I have learnt about social experience models which let me know the different types of workgroup's characteristic and the roles of participants. Besides, the cloud computing section let me know the aspects of Web2.0 and how people make use of cloud to facilitate collaboration.

In lecture 6, I have used a cloud collaboration tools - "google doc" to finish the class activities. Besides, I have learnt the definition of Epistemology and the theories about knowledge. So far in the course, the philosophy part in the lecture 6 is the most difficult to understand for me.


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The first cloud collaboration tool I have used is Dropbox, which I used to share my documents to the classmate on the internet.  It was very useful to me to share my work to other group members while doing a group project. Sometimes, the document is very large in file size, I cannot send it by e-mail. If I do not use cloud space. I will need to make a ftp or copy the document files to the USB flash and then give it other group members. It save my time for sharing data. It is very convenience that you can just simply put the file into your local hard disk's dropbox folder, then it will automatically upload to the internet and automatically download into group member's hard disk.

http://www.dropbox.com