Network Map of Knowledge and Art V2.0: Preview

I planned to improve this project since last year and now finally I found some more time to dedicate this hobby. The idea is to overcome the major limitation of my previous work create a more realistic map of influence that considers the nested influence: if A influences B and B influences C, then A should influences C as well. This longer chain was not considered in my first model and has deep implications on how to consider authors influence.

Until some time ago I was stuck with two major roadblocks. The first is size of the data – my Wikipedia query contains over 13000 people – so I had to experiment different solutions and implementations to settle with a matrix representation to simplify the computational aspects and the Excel VBA code. 

Sketch of the network representation and pseudo-algorithm

Network map of Knowledge and Art: possible improvements

Thanks to everybody for reading me and  the good suggestions on how to improve the model. I will work on this again, if you have ideas, please leave a comment to this post. My plan in the next weeks/months is to:

• Research more the Wikipedia Ontology and the SPARQL language. I only have a shallow knowledge in this field and the data extraction is tricky…for example to make things more difficult, in certain cases the field used is “influenced”, instead of “influenced” or “influenced by”. Any patient volunteer on this to help writing advanced queries is welcome!
• Add the time dimension. The information is readily available in the Wikipedia infoboxes. This will allow to get a better view on how ideas a propagated and their persistence
• Improve the influence concept. At the moment the model contemplate a fairly subjective and simple model. Need to add weights and longer chain of influence (e.g.: Cicero => Rousseau => Kant => … => …). This part will be tricky as we are not talking about hard disciplines (try to tell a write his work is deeply influenced by XYZ actors to see either anger or tears…)

Network map of Knowledge and Art

Finally, after weeks, I have the time and the energy to post complex content. I wrote the essay below for a online course on network analysis. The overall experience was great as I discovered a world of possibilities for the discipline; any type of connection: power , conspiracy, social or knowledge network can be analyzed with the same underlining theory.

Abstract

I wish to propose a network model to map the knowledge and ideas of the people contained in Wikipedia. The methodology of the creation of the dataset is generic and can be re-applied to any category of Wikipedia. The algorithms used were successful in identifying the clusters and to provide some insights on the dynamics of knowledge. The analysis is performed by utilizing different metrics such as modularity, weighted degrees and eccentricity. A small world test according to the Watts and Strogatz model is performed as well. You can find a printable and zoomable version of the full map here or the high res image here.