Scale-Free Networks

Guido Caldarelli

Why I looked at this book

The analysis of networks can reveal interesting (and potentially useful) information, such an the six links between you and anyone else. Power laws and scale-free networks are an important part of this analysis. This book looks to be an introduction to the mathematics of the subject, which I hope will be accessible to a wide range of readers and not just for those with advanced mathematics degrees.

First impressions

This is one of those books where I wish there was more consistency about what is offered as a sample. Parts of the introduction aren't available in the Amazon 'Look Inside', but you can see all of it if you download the Kindle sample. Fortunately the whole of chapter 1 is available at fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/13/9780199211517.pdf

The author tries to make the book accessible, but I thought he doesn't always succeed. For instance the concept of assortativity of a network is introduced, but before this there is a lot about conditional probability, then a definition of assortativity, and then a short discussion of what it means. I felt it would be better to discuss the relevent properties of actual networks first and then introduce the mathematics and defintions.

However, I felt the mathematics was reasonable for readers of a book at this level, and so as long as this it doesn't get more advanced as the book goes on then I think that it will be OK. I also hope to see more real world examples in later chapters.