Questions from a beginner

[epzgwu]

Dear all,

I am a totally newbie of Gephi, so I would like to know some basis of this powerful tool:

1) Is Gephi suitable for analyzing probability distribution properties of a certain complex network, for example, the distribution of node degrees, node betweenness, etc.? Or I have to use other tools (such as R) to do the statistical work?

2) I have found the function to calculate node betweennesses, but I don't know how to calculate the edge betweenness, which will be vital to my research. Furthermore, in fact I have write my own JAVA code to calculate those edge betweennesses by Newman's algorithm (althrough it seems not so efficient due to my poor coding skill), with the help of JGraphT, is it possible to be integrated into the Gephi platform?

3) If I ask Gephi to import a network from a graphml file, I found that the layout will be different everytime, even if when I have applied the same layout algorithm. How can I get the same layout everytime?

4) Is it legal to incorporate Gephi into other JAVA packages?

Thanks a lot.

[mbastian]

Hi,

Is Gephi suitable for analyzing probability distribution properties of a certain complex network, for example, the distribution of node degrees, node betweenness, etc.? Or I have to use other tools (such as R) to do the statistical work?

Yes Gephi embeds a set of metrics and a clustering algorithm (louvain modularity) than you can use directly from the Statistics panel, see Quick Start.

I have found the function to calculate node betweennesses, but I don't know how to calculate the edge betweenness, which will be vital to my research. Furthermore, in fact I have write my own JAVA code to calculate those edge betweennesses by Newman's algorithm (althrough it seems not so efficient due to my poor coding skill), with the help of JGraphT, is it possible to be integrated into the Gephi platform?

You don't need to be a Java rockstar to create a Gephi plug-in, follow the steps. You even now have a template, basically a Netbeans plug-in that allows to create an empty Gephi plug-in in one click. Then you just fill it with the calculation code.

If I ask Gephi to import a network from a graphml file, I found that the layout will be different everytime, even if when I have applied the same layout algorithm. How can I get the same layout everytime?

It's not completely obvious to do that, as randomness comes from the fact nodes are randomly positionned when you import a file. If you set a starting position in the GraphML file, the layout will execute the same. Our random layout hould allow to set a seed, that would be the easiest way, feel free to fill a bug about that.

Is it legal to incorporate Gephi into other JAVA packages?

Sure, and you may be interested by the Gephi Toolkit, to use use Gephi features as a library in other applications.