Today’s Dad Joke

My neighbor had the nerve to ring my doorbell at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Luckily I was still up playing the drums.

Housekeeping

  • Self Assessment Reflection next week
    • Goals for the class
    • Feedback for me
  • R Lab 2
  • This week was a lot: R + readings
  • Use Thursdays as R working time
  • More videos from me

The Plan for R

  • A short assignment every few weeks
  • Goals:
    • Create and import network data
    • Use visualizations to explore interesting connections
    • Calculate basic network statistics

Creation of edges

Why do people form relationships / edges?

  • Psychological explanations
    • Homophily

Triadic closure / transitivity

Balance Theory

Why do people form edges?

  • Rational explanations
    • Social capital
      • People seek to fill structural holes and obtain powerful positions in the network
    • Social exchange theory
      • Do the benefits of relationship outweigh the costs?
      • What resources does each node have and need?
  • Assumed to operate at the dyad / edge level

Focus of Activity

  • Partially a pushback against these
    • People choose activities
    • Ties are often a function of activities, not dyadic choices