If you're looking for the big picture - you've come the right place. The social network maps found here illustrate what happens when many ego-centric social graphs are combined. In other words these maps are a 'mash-up' of social graphs from historic figures.
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From the American Revolution to the Civil War
- Node Count: 246
- Consolidated Edges: 1372
- Communities Detected: 9
- Highest Closeness Centrality: John Calhoun
- Timespan: roughly 100 years
At a glance the red and orange areas (in the thumbnail to the left) are from the American Revolutionary War, the yellowish area represents individuals from the early 18th century while the cooler colors represent events such the Civil War, Bear Flag Revolt as well as smaller nodes of literary figures. It's interesting to note how much of a connector John Calhoun was between the major time periods.
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19th Century Literary Community
- Node Count: 53
- Consolidated Edges: 92
- Timespan: roughly 50 years
A growing list which currently includes the likes of James Lowell, Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Greenleaf Whittier who it turns out was one of the more politically active authors. This graph also includes politicians and military figures of the time if they happened to be mentioned. The size of a node is determined by how many times they are mentioned or written to by others. So far some of the most mentioned out of network nodes are Charles Sumner and Abraham Lincoln.
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Letters of Rufus King Vol. 5
- Node Count: 42
- Consolidated Edges: 105
- Timespan: 1807 - 1816
One of the richest sources of historic letters are the many books that have been digitized. What does a network generated from just one of these books look like and what can we learn? One relationship pops out right away; Rufus King and Christopher Gore were best friends. Of course they both wrote a lot of letters and the book is centered around Mr. King so you would expect his connections to others (edges) to be the strongest. What's perhaps more interesting are edges between letter writers and people simply mentioned in letters. For example one of the strongest edges existed between Timothy Pickering and Thomas Jefferson in part because Mr. Pickering often postulated about possible conspiracies involving Mr. Jefferson. Even though Mr. Monroe authored no letters in this collection he is the most influential (using Eigenvector Centrality measurement) because he was mentioned by many high scoring nodes.
