Introduction to Statistical Network Analysis

• Activity Number: 461
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: ASA
• Author(s): Ji Zhu*
• Companies: University of Michigan

Abstract

Recent advances in computing and measurement technologies have led to an explosion in the amount of data that are being collected in all areas of application. Much of these data have complex structure, in the form of text, images, video, audio, streaming data, and so on. This tutorial lecture focuses on one important class of problems, viz, data with network or graph structure. Such data have become common in diverse engineering and scientific areas, such as biology, computer science, electrical engineering, economics, sociology and so on. Network analysis has also received a lot of attention in computer science, physics, social sciences, biology, and statistics. The applications are many and varied, including social networks, gene regulatory networks, recommender systems, and so on. In this lecture, we will present an introduction to concepts, methods, and applications of network analysis. Topics to be covered will include statistical models of networks including random graphs, statistical methods and computer algorithms for the analysis and interpretation of network data, spectral methods and random matrix theory etc.