Repository link: jack-margeson/email-topology

Direct link to paper: jack-margeson/email-topology/email-topology.pdf

Project Overview

This project was completed for a graduate course at the University of Cincinnati, CS6072: Network Science. The assignment tasked me with choosing an influential article in the realm of network science, attempting to replicate the findings of the article, and then providing a write-up on my findings.

For my article of interest, I chose “Scale-free topology of e-mail networks” by Holger Ebel, Lutz-Ingo Mielsch, and Stefan Bornholdt. To summarize the piece, it was found that the e-mail network at Kiel University in Germany exhibited scale-free, small-world behaviors. This closely aligned with previous findings in the field for other social based networks.

Included in the repository linked above is my replication attempt using Python and a package called networkx, a popular network science tool. In total, I was able to replicate the scale-free, small-world behaviors observed in the original paper on a stripped down version of the original dataset.

Also included in the repository is my full write-up of the project. My paper goes over a brief summary of the original paper, a summary of my own findings, potential areas of future study branching from these findings, and more.

Takeaways

This was the first project that I really ever had the chance to create a formal paper for. I really enjoyed this type of work, utilizing LaTeX in order to compile the final document. Personally, I think the formatting turned out really well and I’m glad I got to practice my TeX skills, being that the only other thing that I had ever written in the markdown language was my resume.

While not exclusively because of this project, the course really opened my eyes to the field of network science. I find myself thinking about usecases for network topology studies frequently. I find the field very interesting–and I hope that I get to utilize what I learned in the class and from this project in my future line of work in some way.

Screenshots

Replicated figures: