Social Networks as Symbolic Data

Abstract

Starting from the main idea of Symbolic Data Analysis to extend Statistics and Data Mining methods from first-order to second-order objects, we focus on network data-as defined in the framework of Social Network Analysis-to define a graph structure and the underlying network in the context of complex data objects. A Network Symbolic description is defined according to the statistical characterization of the network topological properties. We use suitable network measures, which are represented by means of symbolic variables. Their study through multidimensional data analysis, allows for the synthetic representation of a network as a point onto a metric space. The proposed approach is discussed on the basis of a simulation study considering three classical network growth processes.