social network analysis tools + ruby + mac

[Billy Smith]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Hi there. I have a large dataset of people (nodes) and their relationships
(edges) and I'd like to do some social network analysis on it (e.g.
calculate betweenness of nodes, centrality, etc). I have two things I'd
like to be using: Ruby (as I'm new to programming and this is the language
I've been learning and love it!) and my Mac. Unfortunately, most of the
analytical tools I've found are for PC (e.g. Pajek, UCINET), and I haven't
been able to find any Ruby libraries/tools to help (though there are some
pretty mature ones for Python I see). Someone please help me - the last
thing I want to do is bootcamp and python...

Best,
Billy

 

[Alex Gutteridge]

Hi there. I have a large dataset of people (nodes) and their
relationships
(edges) and I'd like to do some social network analysis on it (e.g.
calculate betweenness of nodes, centrality, etc). I have two things
I'd
like to be using: Ruby (as I'm new to programming and this is the
language
I've been learning and love it!) and my Mac. Unfortunately, most of
the
analytical tools I've found are for PC (e.g. Pajek, UCINET), and I
haven't
been able to find any Ruby libraries/tools to help (though there are
some
pretty mature ones for Python I see). Someone please help me - the
last
thing I want to do is bootcamp and python...

Best,
Billy

IGraph (http://cneurocvs.rmki.kfki.hu/igraph/) and its Ruby bindings (http://igraph.rubyforge.org/igraph/
) are designed for this kind of analysis. It can do betweenness and
centrality and quite a few other things. Let me know if you have any
problems.

Alex Gutteridge