MIS 587 - Blog 4
Hello everyone and welcome to my 4th blog for MIS 587.
Week 6 of MIS 587 covered lectures 11 through 13.
This week's lectures introduced us to networks, how to visually represent networks, and the properties of networks in relation to business intelligence.
Lecture 11 describes networks as a collection of entities and the relationships among them, often defined as a social structure made up of entities, known as vertices, and their relationships, which are called edges. Networks in business intelligence are also called graphs, and can also be mathematically represented as G(V,E).
Dr. Ram states in her lectures that networks are important because they help to understand different types of phenomena, such as information diffusion, disease, propagation, and relationship formation, among many other types of phenomena. Additionally, they help to understand complex systems and their behavior, which can be very beneficial for organizations to understand their business practices and use the information derived from networks for their own competitive advantages. Companies such as Facebook, Amazon. and Google have recognized the value of networks in the business intelligence sense, and have used them for in their businesses to become leaders within their own industries.
As described in previous lectures, visualization plays a valuable role in helping to present information in a concise and understandable format, and network visualization is no different from the other types of visualizations presented in class. Network visualization helps to lay out the relationship between different nodes/ entities in a network, and they help to understand their patterns and interactions. Network layouts can be categorized into different forms, such as force directed layouts, geographic layouts, circular layouts, clustering layouts, and hierarchical layouts, depending on the information presented and its intended use.
Networks also have different properties the user can use to define and understand their networks, such the network paths, different types of centrality and their measurements, which are helpful in interpreting the network visualizations and transforming that information into business intelligence.
Reflection on Lecture Materials: While I haven't had much experience with networks in relation to business intelligence, I found that networking topics tie in a bit with lecture material from my past MIS courses. For example, in MIS 578, one of the topics included a network representation of a set of project activities and one of the techniques was finding the critical path of the network visualization, where we wanted to determine the shortest amount of time to complete a project based on the network and its edges, which were often used as a set of time to complete a project. This is only one instance where network visualization is used, but I am sure there are far more complex use cases where networks and graphs are involved. I also have heard a bit about the Linkedin maps tool, but I never had the chance to utilize it myself and learn how it works. Although the tool is now obsolete by Linkedin, I am excited to learn how to use Gephi tool and create some network visualizations myself.
Hi, Matthew,
ReplyDeleteI had not even considered the applications of networking to project management. I bet you could do all sorts of interesting things as an I.T. manager with networks. I will have to ask my own manager if they have ever considered applying any of these concepts to their own set of tools. Great post!
- Tyler
Interesting. I have yet to take MIS578, but from my previous project management experience in MS Project, I can understand a bit about what you are saying. I do agree that there are some similarities when trying to determine the critical path for a specific activity or milestone. I'm looking forward to MIS 578 and hopefully using some of the skill I learned in this class. Thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteNice reflection on network analysis materials, Matthew. Similarly to you, I have found this network analysis materials to have some connections with past MIS courses, such as MIS 545 - data mining. Specifically the modularity algorithm for determine densely connected nodes that form communities within a network. For homework 4, I really think the algorithm works correct given the colored communities that I saw in the network.
ReplyDeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteI agree network visualization in business intelligence is a powerful tool. When working with individuals who don’t have much experience with data, they seem to find the visuals helpful when trying to understand a set of data. Especially those who need to make decisions based on the data presented. I have yet to take MIS587 but since you gave a little glimpse I am looking forward to taking it. Enjoyed your post!
Hi Matthew,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I also saw some commonalities with some of the courses in MIS. I remember learning about ANNs in our MIS 545 class, so the terms like nodes, edges, and weights were relatively familiar for me as I worked through the lectures. However, I wasn't familiar with all the visualization techniques in Gephi like the Forced Atlas stuff when network diagrams are used to convey information on communities. Thanks for the nice summary of our lectures, it helps keep the content fresh in my mind. Best of luck to you with the rest of the course!
Hello Matthew, thank you for sharing your analysis. I am also fairly new to the whole network concept and I found your experience with MIS 578 interesting. I guess I never really thought of project management incorporating network visualizations. However, it does make sense. I would think it also helps outline obstacles that need to be overcome in order to complete the project by the deadline. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete