Data Science of the Facebook World
May 6, 2013 9:03 AM   Subscribe

Stephen Wolfram used the data provided by Facebook users to do some demographic analysis.
posted by reenum (7 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
I wish there were an easy way to make a cluster diagram of friend connections, like he does for his daughter. I'd be curious to see what mine looks like.
posted by painquale at 10:15 AM on May 6, 2013


Facebook is all about cellular automatons, makes sense that Wolfram would be involved.
posted by benzenedream at 10:33 AM on May 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


This is super super embarrassing but somehow until literally just now I was conflating Stephen Wolfram with Steven Jay Gould. Which doesn't even make sense.
posted by threeants at 10:40 AM on May 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


If you already have the data and have a little bit of proficiency with web stuff, this example for the d3.js library is a relatively easy way to make that sort of diagram. The list of nodes and edges is separated out into a json file.

Or, with less coding and much more clicking, Inkscape is free and can draw this sort of graph, if you just draw a bunch of circles and connect them with the right connector thingies and then select everything and use the "Layout" feature.
posted by XMLicious at 10:42 AM on May 6, 2013


I wish there were an easy way to make a cluster diagram of friend connections, like he does for his daughter. I'd be curious to see what mine looks like.

Piece of cake. Go to www.wolframalpha.com, type in "Facebook report". Follow the steps (it connects with your Facebook account, gets your OK, asks you to create a Wolfram Alpha account if you don't have one, just by creating a password). It crunches your data, and produces a lengthy report about all kinds of things. Scroll down past all that and you'll find your cluster diagrams, several views with several display options.
posted by beagle at 12:07 PM on May 6, 2013 [8 favorites]


It's like Mark Zuckerberg joined OK Cupid.
posted by scblackman at 12:09 PM on May 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


Hey thanks, I was hoping that Wolfram Alpha would have something that would let me make one. Pretty fun!
posted by painquale at 1:08 PM on May 6, 2013


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