ECS 253 / MAE 253, Winter 2023
Network Theory and Applications
Class Projects

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A large component of this class is a course project. Students may work individually or in small groups. The projects will complement and extend the lecture material, and allow the student to extend ideas of networks into their research areas. The project may include simulation of a new model, analysis of data from a known network, visualization tools, developing a software platform.....

Potential data sets: (see also the smartsite)

  • The Netflix Prize (recommendation networks). Already won, but still a good problem.
    (Unfortunately no sequel contest due to lawsuits over privacy.)

  • Yelp Dataset Challenge: If you come up with an interesting use of their data and submit it to Yelp by July 31, 2014, then you could win $5,000.

  • See if there are network-related challenges on Innocentive or Kaggle. For example, predict directed connections among neurons based on time series of their firing, or classify sentiments on Rotten Tomatoes.

  • CRAWDAD data on wireless networks.

  • Common Crawl (Web crawl data)

  • Reality mining mobile phone social network data at MIT.

  • Wikipedia --- current structure, dynamic evolution, English vs different languages, ...

  • Power grid: analysis of structure; modeling of cascading failures; siesmic fragility.

  • GIS data: Analyze highway and road data; correlate data from social interaction networks with geographical location; visualize (correlate network connectivity and geographic location).

  • Distributed energy generation: hydrogen economy and location of fueling stations; dynamic demand curve and network adaptation (to make use of scarce resources or to mitigate failure).

  • Transportation: car travel versus air travel (contrast optimal network topology); subway systems (compare optimal to actual)

  • Data networks (esp. Internet): algorithms for web search, for routing, for routing with dynamic edges, etc.

  • Social networks --- e.g. co-author networks, collaboration networks, facebook, facebook games

  • Software networks.

  • Network visualization.

  • Ecological and biological networks.

  • Economic networks.

  • Tracking political funding

  • Biological networks

  • Percolation, gossip algorithms, and effective spreading in social networks or ad hoc networks

  • Use network techniques to get insight into problems in number theory. For inspiration, see The complex architecture of primes and natural numbers (arXiv 2014).