MWnets - an R package for the analysis of multiway networks

Presenter:  Vladimir Batagelj

In the SNA literature, we can find some well-known 3-way networks such as CKM physicians innovation (1957), Kapferer tailor shop (1972), Krackhardt office CSS (1987), Lazega law firm (2001), etc. Recently physicists working on complex networks, for example, Manlio De Domenico (2015), became interested in multiplex (multi-relational) networks. In 1992 Borgatti and Everett, following Baker (1986), extended the blockmodeling to general k-way binary networks. In Genova (2022) a 4-way network about Italian student mobility, based on V = { provinces, universities, programs, years ) was analyzed. The R package MWnets is a result of an attempt to develop some additional methods for the analysis of such data. A weighted multiway network N = (V,L,w) is based on nodes from k finite sets (ways or dimensions) V = (V_1, V_2, ..., V_k), the set of links L ⊆ V_1 ╳ V_2 ╳ ... ╳ V_k, and the weight w : L → R. In a general multiway network, different additional data (node properties, link weights) can be known. The workshop starts with some examples of multiway networks and a format for their description. The participants will learn about different transformations of multiway networks such as slicing, reordering of ways, joining the ways, flattening of a way, projection to a selected way, aggregation by a way partition (blockmodeling), normalization, recoding (binarization), 3D visualization (X3D), and others. They will be illustrated by their application in the analysis of different multiway networks. The current version of the package is available at: https://github.com/bavla/ibm3m/tree/master/multiway .