A1010
Title: A uniform placement of alters on spherical surface for ego-centric network with community structure and alter attributes
Authors: Chao-Hui Huang - National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) [presenting]
Frederick Kin Hing Phoa - Academia Sinica (Taiwan)
Abstract: An ego-centric network describes the relationships between a particular node (ego) to its neighbouring nodes (alters), so it is essential to present such a network with good visualization. The aim is to introduce an efficient method, namely the Uniform Placement of Alters on a Spherical Surface (U-PASS), to represent an ego-centric network so that all alters are scattered uniformly on the surface of the unit sphere. Unlike other simple uniformity that considers maximizing Euclidean distances among nodes, U-PASS is a three-stage method that spreads the alters considering existing edges among alters, no overlapping of node clusters, and node attribute information. Particle swarm optimization is employed to improve efficiency in node allocations. The connection between the U-PASS and the minimum energy design on a two-dimensional flat plane with a specific gradient is shown to guarantee uniformity. A demonstration is provided on allocating nodes of an ego-centric network with 50 nodes, and some distance statistics show good performance of U-PASS when compared to four state-of-the-art methods via self-organizing maps and force-driven approaches.
