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Scale-Free Nature of Social Networks

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Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining

Synonyms

Complex networks; Network models; Scale-free distributions; Universal scaling

Glossary

Degree:

The degree of a node in a network is the number of edges or connections to that node

ER graph:

The network model in which edges are set between nodes with equal probabilities

Fat-tailed distributions:

Have tails that decay more slowly than exponentially. All power-law distributions are fat tailed, but not all fat-tailed distributions are power laws (e.g., the lognormal distribution is fat tailed but is not a power-law distribution)

Node degree distribution:

The distribution function P(k) that gives the probability that a node selected at random has exactly k edges

Power-law distribution:

Has a probability function of the form P(x) ~ x−a

Scale-freeness:

Feature of objects or laws that does not change if length scale is multiplied by a common factor; also known as scale invariance

SF network:

The network with power-law distribution of node degrees

Definition

The notion of...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland

    Piotr Fronczak

Authors
  1. Piotr Fronczak
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Piotr Fronczak .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Reda Alhajj

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Jon Rokne

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Computer Science and Management, Institute of Informatics, Wrocław University of Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Przemysław Kazienko

  2. Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, West Pomeranian University of Technology, Szczecin, Poland

    Jaroslaw Jankowski

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Fronczak, P. (2018). Scale-Free Nature of Social Networks. In: Alhajj, R., Rokne, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Social Network Analysis and Mining. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7131-2_248

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