Customer Reviews

The Structure and Dynamics of Networks: (Princeton Studies in Complexity)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Criticism of this book thus far stems from the following:

1) It is a collection of papers.
2) Some of those papers are fairly technical and may be a little daunting for beginners.

While both of these criticisms are accurate, they don't stop the book from being an excellent resource.

While it is a collection of papers, it is a very well-chosen one which includes some of the most important and influential papers in the field, and covers a wide array of subjects within it. Furthermore, each section has an intro written by the authors, which summarizes the works in the section in a fairly nontechnical manner.

This book saved me from days of basic research and frustration in trying to locate full-text articles, and when I was done with it I felt that I had a fairly good working knowledge of the field. I imagine it will be fairly handy for future reference as well.

As for (2), this book was my introduction to network analysis, and while I admit I was unable to read every paper, I was able to understand the main point of almost all of them. Caveat: I am a mathematician. However, as I said, I was previously unfamiliar to the field--and my background gave me little advantage considering I didn't care to go through the equations in detail.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a mildly technical background (say, a few years of university-level science, engineering, or math under their belt) interested in learning about network theory.

I was disappointed. The authors are leading scientists in the field, and I therefore expected a coherent exposition of the subject based on their combined knowledge and experience. Instead, the book is only a collection of reprints with some short paragraphs to use as linkage. It is not much more than a list of "best" papers in the field.

Simply an excellent collection that makes for both a wonderful introduction to network theory and an excellent survey of key historical papers. Wonderful choice for anyone interested in this sort of work.

I am very disappointed with that book. The summary as published by Amazon convinces us that it is a general reader book. It is not. Complexity demands simplicity for understanding. This book is about complication (sorry) and frustrates the reader who wants a reference book - as it looks assured by its (now I know) ambitious title. It is not for beginners.

Excellent resource to follow the progress of Network Science through the history of the field up to the present day. I would definitlly recommend this book to anyone embarking on a social netowkring track. You may need a math referesher to follow some of the studies but well worth it!