Course Contents

Date Description of Lecture
Week 12, April 4-8 Monday finished last week's material on Braess Paradox and Kidney exchange. Wednesday is a fun review exercise.
Week 12 Jeopardy & Bingo & Additional Topics. Note that the numbers in the slides in brackets are links, so you can click them to jump to the corresponding question.
Tutorial this week will be covering the A2 solutions.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording (review Jeopardy): MSStream Link
Tutorial Recording: [Link removed after Final Exam]
Week 11, March 28 - April 1 Finish covering week 10 material on properties of FPDA and MPDA. Congestion games and network traffic. Braess paradox, kidney exchanges, recap of course.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Tutorial this week will be covering the practice question solutions.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Tutorial Recording: [Link removed after Final Exam]
Week 10, March 21-25 Finish covering week 9 material on bargaining. The stable marriange (matching) problem. Gale Shapley algorithm(s): FPDA and MPDA. Properties of FPDA and MPDA algorithms. Other considerations regarding stable matching.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live Tutorial slides: slides.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 9, March 14-18 Finish chapter 21 with the discussion of genetic inheritance and ``Mitochondrial Eve''. Bargaining in a Network Exchange Model.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live Tutorial slides: slides.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 8, March 7-11 Choosing an initial set of adopters. Common knowledge vs local knowledge. Competitive influence spread. Contact networks and the spread of infection.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live Tutorial slides: slides.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 7, Feb 28 - Mar 4 Influence spread in a social network. The spread of fake news in Twitter. A threshold model for influence spread. Determining the thresholds from the relative rewards. Complete cascades vs tightly knit blocking communities. Choosing an initial set of initial adopters.
We didn't quite have time to finish blocking clusters, so that material will be finished in week 8.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
No tutorial slides as we are taking up A1.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: [Link removed after Final Exam]
Week 6, Feb 14-18 We consider the observed power laws for a number of social and information networks. Power law distributions vs. a normal distributions. Power law distribution for the number of in-links to a Web page. To provide some plausible explanation of this phenomena, we consider the Kumar et al preferential attachment model for network dynamics. The sensitivity to randomness in the initial stages of a random dynamic process. The Saganik et al music downloading experiment. We then switch to chapter 14 and the role of link structure in Web search and ranking.
We didn't quite finish the proof-sketch of convergence, so that material is covered in week 7.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live Tutorial slides: slides.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 5, Feb 7-11 The small worlds (6 degrees of separation) phenomena. The Watts-Strogatz model. Kleinberg's analysis lead to rank based distribution of friends. Real world geographical data supporting the power law that probability of a friend at rank r is ~1/r. The Liben-Nowell and Backstrom et al studies. Social distance. Adamic and Adar study.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live tutorial slides: Tutorial slides
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 4, Jan 31 - Feb 4 Chapter 5 and social networks with positive and negative signs. Balanced triangles and strongly balanced networks. The strong balance theorem. Weak structural balance. Using the Signed Laplacian matrix to find balanced subgraphs.
In lecture, we didn't quite reach Signed Laplacian matrices, so that material is covered in week 5.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live tutorial slides: Tutorial slides
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 3, Jan 24-28 Homophily. The Schelling segregation model. The selection vs influence question. Social-affiliation networks. Three types of closures. Calculating the probability of new link creation.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live tutorial slides: Tutorial slides and Prof. Ashton's slides
Extra tutorial slides from Sections 2 and 3: Extra Tutorial Slides
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 2, Jan 17-21 What can be learned from network structure. Strong and weak ties. Clustering coefficient. Triadic closure. Weak ties, overlap, communities. The Sintos and Tsaparas study. The Rozenshtein et al follup of Sintos and Tsaparas. The role of approximation algorithms.
In lecture, we didn't have quite enough time to cover Sintos and Tsaparas onwards, so the material is covered in week 3.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Live tutorial slides: Tutorial slides
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Tutorial Recording: MSStream Link
Week 1, Jan 10-14 Course administration. Motivation for the course: networks everywhere and of growing importance. Examples of networks and discussion of basic graph theory concepts and facts using examples.
Clean lecture slides: slides.
Live lecture slides: slides.
Monday Recording: MSStream Link
Wednesday Recording: MSStream Link
Friday Recording: MSStream Link


Note 1: "clean" slides are for students who like to annotate -- they contain no transitions or anouncements. "live" slides are updated as I make changes, and they contain announcements, updates, slide transitions, and possibly minor clarifications, corrections or additional examples.


Note 2: Download links for lecture & tutorial recordings can be found on Quercus.

Tentative Course Schedule

Week No. Dates Tentative Schedule of Topics Suggested Readings
0 Jan 10-14 Intro Course Contents
1 Jan 10-14 Networks, graph concepts EK Ch 1 and 2
2 Jan 17-21 Strong and weak ties EK Ch 3
3 Jan 24-28 Homophily and Influence EK Ch 4
4 Jan 31 - Feb 4 Structural balance EK Ch 5
5 Feb 7-11 Small worlds EK Ch 20
6 Feb 14-18 Power laws, Web link analysis EK Ch 18,14
6+ Feb 21-25 Reading week
7 Feb 28 - Mar 4 Rumour spread, influence maximization EK Ch 19
8 March 7-11 Influence models, disease spread EK Ch 19,21
9 March 14-18 Mitochondrial Eve, Bargaining power EK Ch 21,12
10 March 21-25 Stable marriage, Network traffic EK Ch 8
11 March 28 - April 1 Braess' paradox, kidney exchange. EK Ch 8
12 April 4-8 Additional topics and course review.
Exam Period April 11-29

Linear Algebra Review

Although linear algebra is not a core focus of the course, you should be familiar with the concepts of matrix multiplication, block matrix multiplication, span, matrix null space, linear independence, orthonormal bases, eigenvalues and eigenvectors. For a quick review (~20 pages) of the above and more, you can read sections 1-3.9, and 3.12 of Kolter's Linear Algebra Review course, as well as section 7.3.2 on block matrices from Cherney, et al.'s Linear Algebra textbook
For a more detailed/technical review, you may want to consult Tyler Holden's MAT223 lecture notes (Sections 3.4, 4.4, 4.5, and 4.7), or Beezer's more rigorous A First Course in Linear Algebra

Learning through digital spaced repetition

As part of your weekly participation quiz, you will be required to write 3 flashcards about what you think was the most important definition, proof, or concept from the last week's lecture.
Since I'm making you write these flashcards, I strongly recommend that you put them into a free tool such as Anki that can automatically schedule and review them for you. For instructions, as well as why I think this is useful to you (both in CSC303, and beyond), please see the following document.

Additional Course Materials:

Additional resources, demos and papers will be posted here as the term progressess:

  • Last year's online offering of CSC303 (you should be able to access most recordings)
  • Probability Primer
  • Link to Michael Kearns' course
  • yEd Graph Editor is a good, free, multiplatform graph editor (may be helpful for assignments)
  • Starbird et al paper on strategic information spread
  • The Oracle of Bacon
  • The Backstrom and Kleinberg article on Facebook romantic relations
  • The Bearman and Moody article on the relevance of the clustering coefficient
  • The Sintos and Tsaparas article on labeling weak and strong ties
  • The Rozenshtein et al. article on labeling weak and strong ties
  • McDermott et al. article on the role of influence on divorce
  • Hulchanski Septermber 2018 article in Toronto Star newspaper
  • Hulchanski February 2019 talk at Ryerson University
  • Ordozgoiti et al. paper on finding balanced subgraphs
  • Reeves yellow paper on unconscious bias in the evaluation of writing
  • The Backstrom, Sun, Marlow geographical location article.
  • Adamic and Adar social distance article.
  • Kumar et al paper on web links and the power law distribution.
  • Salganik et al article studying the impact of influence in determining popularity.
  • Barabasi and Albert preferential attachnment article.
  • Interactive eigenvector demo
  • Vosoughi et al. article on the spread of news on Twitter
  • Price's study of the citation network.
  • The Braubach and Kearns article on interesting individuals.
  • Avin et al article on elites in a social network
  • Avin et al article on preferential attachment as a unque equilibrium
  • Kempe et al article on choosing an initial set of influential adopters.
  • Mitochondrial Eve demo.