I presented on social media network analysis on October 20, 2011 in New York City at Predictive Analytics World.

A map of the connections among the people tweeting about the #Pawcon hashtag is below.

Network Maps for End Users: Collect, Analyze, Visualize and Communicate Network Insights with Zero Coding

Abstract: Networks are everywhere except the end user desktop.  NodeXL, the free and open network overview, discovery and exploration add-in for the popular and familiar Excel (2007/2010) spreadsheet allows users who are comfortable making pie charts to now make useful network visualizations.  Developed and released by the Social Media Research Foundation, NodeXL uses Excel as a framework, providing a GUI network browser (a “web browser”?) that novices can use quickly and experts can use to generate sophisticated results.  Data importers provide access to a range of social media network data sources like Twitter, flickr, YouTube, Facebook, email, the WWW, and more through standard file formats (CSV, GraphML, Matrix).  Simple to use tools can automatically analyze, visualize and highlight insights in complex network graphs.  Using NodeXL, researchers have been collecting a wide range of network data sets from various social media services.  These images reveal a range of common social formations in social media and point to people who occupy strategic locations in these graphs.

This is a map of the connections among the people who tweeted the term “PAWCON” on the first day of the event:

These are the connections among the Twitter users who recently tweeted the word #pawcon when queried on October 19, 2011, scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another.

A larger version of the image is here: www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6261006732/sizes/l/in/ph…

Top most between users:
@tapan_patel
@pawcon
@sasanalytics
@deloitteba
@kristinevick
@jamet123
@zementis
@kdnuggets
@tibcospotfire
@saspublishing

Graph Metric: Value
Graph Type: Directed
Vertices: 41
Unique Edges: 233
Edges With Duplicates: 120
Total Edges: 353
Self-Loops: 44
Connected Components: 2
Single-Vertex Connected Components: 1
Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component: 40
Maximum Edges in a Connected Component: 352
Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter): 4
Average Geodesic Distance: 1.87133
Graph Density: 0.15304878
NodeXL Version: 1.0.1.179

Here is an example map of the connections among the people who tweeted the term “pawcon” in Twitter on September 14th, a week prior to the event.

Manu Sharma, Principle Research Scientist at LinkedIn gave a great presentation on the patterns found in their data.  Big data, for example, showed that most of the people who previously worked at recently failed banks and financial institutions have updated their profiles to show that they mostly have new jobs at some of the remaining companies in the industry.

The event was held at the New York Hilton: Maps & Directions

The NodeXL team from the Social Media Research Foundation has released a web application that allows users to upload network files and download files other users have uploaded.

The Social Media Research Foundation is dedicated to Open Tools, Open Data, and Open Scholarship.

The NodeXL Graph Gallery on the Web enables the research community to collectively gather and share data sets.

Users of NodeXL will notice a new NodeXL>Data>Export>To Web Gallery menu option which opens this dialog box:

Users will be able to browse the NodeXL Web Gallery for graphs that were recently uploaded:

Users will be able to search for graphs that contain certain keywords:

Users can then get details about the network graph and download those files they would like to investigate.

Here is a map of the connections among the people who tweeted the term “AEJMC” on August 7, 2011:

The top most between people in this network are:@aejmc, @jlab, @karenrussell, @terryflynn, @natcomm, @tmccorkindale, @derigansilver, @tkell, @aejmconlineads, and @jeremyhl:

I will present a Workshop on Social Media Network Analysis and NodeXL at the 9 August 2011 – Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (http://www.aejmc.com) in St. Louis, Missouri along with my colleague Professor Hernando Rojas, from the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin – Madison.

See: http://www.aejmc.com/home/events/annual-convention/

The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals. The Association’s mission is to promote the highest possible standards for journalism and mass communication education, to cultivate the widest possible range of communication research, to encourage the implementation of a multi-cultural society in the classroom and curriculum, and to defend and maintain freedom of communication in an effort to achieve better professional practice and a better informed public.

Our session is:

Using NodeXL for Social Network Analysis
Tuesday — 2 pm to 5 pm
Presented by Communication Theory and Methodology Division
This pre-conference workshop examines social network analysis. Social network analysis can be used to examine message boards, blogs, and friend networks (amongmany other phenomena). Participants will learn to use the NodeXL program to conduct a network analysis. For information, contact Michel M. Haigh, Pennsylvania State University at mmh25@psu.edu.

NodeXL automatically generates a network legend and displays it when the Graph Elements menu is opened:

And the “Legend” option is selected.

This will place a legend at the bottom of the visualization canvas:

Starting in version .165 of NodeXL we have supported the idea of an options file that can be imported, exported and exchanged among users.

If you have set all the knobs and dials of your copy of NodeXL just right, you can export these adjustments and configurations into a single file.  Use the NodeXL>Options>Export feature to create a named file containing your settings.  You can now exchange this file with others.  If you receive an options file, you can use the NodeXL>Options>Import feature to pick it out from the file system and set your copy of NodeXL to the settings defined in that file.

If you use the related NodeXL>Options>Use Current for New feature you can set the defaults for NodeXL to the settings contained in any imported options file.

I have been fine tuning a settings file that generates network visualizations that are tailored for the Twitter networks I have been making many of.  I have saved these sample settings file for NodeXL and you can try them yourself here: NodeXL-Twitter Network-Options Settings.NodeXLOptions.

Download this file, rename it by removing the .txt extension and load it into your copy of NodeXL.

• Group Frames: If your graph has groups and you choose to lay out the groups in their own boxes (NodeXL, Graph, Layout, Layout Options), you can now specify the width of the box outlines.

• Constant Edges: When you select an edge, its width no longer changes. NodeXL used to use the same width for all selected edges, even if the edges had varying widths when unselected.
• Group and Vertex Display Harmony:
  • When a graph has groups, you now have more control over how the groups are shown. Go to NodeXL, Analysis, Groups, Group Options.
  • The NodeXL, Show/Hide, Graph Elements, Groups menu item has been replaced with a checkbox in the Group Options dialog box.

  

• Right-Click Group Controls: Menu items for selecting, expanding, collapsing and removing groups are now available in the menu that appears when you right-click the graph pane. (These are just shortcuts for the same menu items that are available in the Ribbon at NodeXL, Analysis, Groups.)

• WYSIWYCC: What You See Is What You Can Click -
  • Hidden edges and vertices (those that have their Visibility cells set to Hide) can no longer be selected in the graph pane.
  • Edges and vertices that have been filtered (NodeXL, Analysis, Dynamic Filters) can no longer be selected in the graph pane.
• Bigger Twitter Lists: When importing a Twitter list network (NodeXL, Import, From Twitter List Network), you can now enter up to 10,000 usernames. The maximum used to be 500.
• UCINET / Matrix Compatibility: Bug fix: When exporting the graph to a UCINET file (NodeXL, Data, Export, To UCINET Full Matrix DL File), isolated vertices didn’t get exported. When exporting the graph to a new matrix workbook (NodeXL, Data, Export, To New Matrix Workbook), isolated vertices didn’t get exported, when importing a graph from a matrix workbook (NodeXL, Data, Import, From Open Matrix Workbook), isolated vertices didn’t get imported. Now they do!

NodeXL allows users to gather vertices into named collections called “Groups”.  This is handy whenever the entities in the network are made up of different types or an algorithm has divided the network into sub-regions based on how densely some vertices connect to one another.  The Groups menu is found in the NodeXL>Analysis menu:

Since version v.132 of NodeXL it has been possible to Collapse a group of vertices (See: Expand and Collapse Groups of Vertices with NodeXL v.132).  When a group is collapsed all of the vertices within that group are removed from the network graph and replaced with a single vertex with a size proportionate to the number of vertices in the group.  A small “+” plus sign indicates that the vertex is a placeholder for a group of vertices.

If the user expands a collapsed group all of the vertices that had been hidden return to positions in the network visualization.  The Groups menu has commands for creating, collapsing, and expanding groups.

NodeXL (v.166) now has the ability to automatically collapse or expand any group of vertices conditionally based on any attribute in the workbook using the Autofill Columns feature.

The NodeXL Autofill columns feature allows users to map data elements to display elements.  At the bottom of this list (you may need to scroll down to see it) you will now find a new row: Group Collapsed?

There are several network metric attributes for each group that are created when the Find Groups and then the Graph Metrics command has been run on a network in NodeXL:

Selecting one of the data items in the drop down allows you to automatically decide if a group with those attributes will be presented in a collapsed or (default) expanded state.  The data about each group include the number of vertices within the group, the number of connections between those vertices, the number of non-unique connections, the number of unique connections among the vertices, the number of self-connections, the number of unique connected components, the number of isolated vertices, the number of vertices in the largest component, the number of edges in the largest component, the maximum and average width of the largest component, and the density of the group.

These metrics allow for the automated processing of the graph to measure each group and apply a test to decide if a group is too dense or populous to be seen in an expanded state.

I will be speaking at the Jacob T. Schwartz International School for Scientific Research week long Lipari School on Computational Social Science , July 17 – July 23, 2011, Lipari Island, Italy.

This year’s program is dedicated to Computational Social Science: Text and Decisions

Speakers:

• Claudio Cioffi-Revilla: Director of the Center for Social Complexity, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University, Washington DC.
• Huan Liu: Community Detection and Mining in Social Media [abstract]
  School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, Arizona State University
• Roel Popping: Computer-assisted text analysis, and the relevance of decision making and text mining [abstract]
  Department of Sociology, University of Groningen

Tutorials

• Marc A. Smith: Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Maps and Measures with NodeXL [abstract]
  Chief Social Scientist, Connected Action Consulting Group
• Calogero Zarba: Introduction to matrix algebra [abstract]
  Neodata Intelligence s.r.l., Italy
• Alessandro Pluchino: Netlogo: An agent based simulation programmable environment [abstract], University of Catania, Italy

NodeXL offers a range of shapes to represent vertices, including: circle, square, triangle, and diamond in filled and unfilled forms.

Vertices can also be represented as images.

Edges can also have styles:

Recently, we’ve been setting out to set up a new way to set the option settings in NodeXL.  Now we have added a new feature to NodeXL (v.166): savable, selectable configuration option settings files.

This may seem dull but this feature may have a big impact on the ease of use of NodeXL.  This may let the most experienced users of NodeXL share their best practices with the rest of the user community.

Throughout NodeXL you can set a wide range of values, options, and settings.  Change the default size of a font in the Graph Options and we record that setting.  Map the size of a vertex to a value associated with it in Autofill columns  and we record the setting.

Until now, we recorded the settings in several places: some settings went with each workbook, some settings were associated with each machine and stayed on each desktop.  The result was that I could create a great network visualization, save and send someone the workbook and they often would not see what I saw when they opened and visualized the network graph. Why?  People set their settings in lots of different ways, on different machines, creating potentially vastly different results.

Now, NodeXL will record everything about how a network workbook should be rendered in that workbook.

This now also means that expert users can save their settings for NodeXL and exchange them with other users.

NodeXL now has three places to put settings that should make it more reliable to share a workbook and get the same results on different systems.  There will now be a default NodeXL settings file, a per NodeXL workbook settings file (stored in a hidden worksheet in the workbook) and any number of saved settings files.  Users can save their settings in each workbook or decide to save the workbook’s custom set of settings to overwrite the default settings file that will be applied to all subsequent NodeXL workbooks.  Users can also save their settings to one or more named files, which can be shared with others.  Users can import any of these settings files and apply them to an open workbook by selecting NodeXL>Options>Import.

• Each NodeXL workbook now has its own set of options. The options are stored right in the workbook, so if you send a workbook to someone else, she’ll be using the same set of options that you did. (“Options” are the selections you make in NodeXL’s dialog boxes, in the NodeXL tab in the Excel Ribbon, and in the toolbar at the top of the graph pane.)
• If you like the options you’ve selected in a workbook and you want those options to be used for all new NodeXL workbooks, use NodeXL, Options, Use Current for New in the Ribbon.
• You can export a workbook’s options to a separate “options file” that you can send to another NodeXL user or use yourself for other NodeXL workbooks. Use NodeXL, Options, Export.
• Import an options file into a workbook using NodeXL, Options, Import. (Known bug, will be fixed in next release: The setting for the Scale slider at the top of the graph pane does not get imported.)
• The old “Options” button at the top of the graph pane is now called “Graph Options.”
• There is no longer a Background button in NodeXL, Visual Attributes. The graph’s background color and image are now both set via Graph Options.

For those who are running automated collections that then run automated processing of a workbook (see: How to schedule the creation of a network with NodeXL and Windows Task Scheduler) you should note that:

• The NodeXL Network Server console program now lets you specify a NodeXL options file to use when a network is saved to a NodeXL workbook. See the NodeXLOptionsFile topic in the SampleNetworkConfiguration.xml file for details.  This means that the same machine can be used for scheduled network collection and processing without console users interfering with the settings for automated graphs.

After you click in the graph pane, a number of keyboard shortcuts are now available for functions that had previously been available in the visualization pane’s right-click menu. Now, you can press:

Ctrl+A to select all vertices and edges
Ctrl+V to select all vertices
Ctrl+E to select all edges
Ctrl+D to deselect everything
Ctrl+P to edit the properties of the selected vertices
Ctrl+C to save the graph image to the Windows clipboard
Ctrl+I to save the graph image to a file
Arrow key to move the selected vertices a small distance
Shift+arrow key to move the selected vertices a large distance.

(If you forget a shortcut, most of them are listed in the graph pane’s right-click menu.)

If you have any suggestions for other frequent tasks that could be accelerated with a keyboard command, please contact us on the NodeXL discussion board or here in the comments.

In this map nodes represent the major feature groups and functions in the NodeXL application.

This map will become the default file that will open when you run NodeXL for the first time.  You will see a dialog like this:

Select Yes to have the graph above imported into the workbook.  You can then display the graph using the Show Graph button in the NodeXL menu ribbon.

After that, it will be available via the help menus. When you import the file, all of the data is also available in the spreadsheet part of NodeXL so that you can experiment with changing values there to see the impact in the graph display after you hit the “refresh graphs” button.

Over the coming weeks we plan to release additional sample network data sets that illustrate key concepts and methods in network science.  Suggestions for sample networks are welcome!

In many cases I look at a network graph and apply a series of operations to transform it into a more presentable form.  For example, I often calculate graph metrics, use Autofill columns to map data to display attributes like size, color, or shape, create clusters, sub-graph images, and then select the Harel-Koren layout and select the options so that small components get lined up in neat rows at the bottom of the graph.  I like the edges to be gray and partially transparent.  I often set the font size to a large 24 points because I scale the graph to about 10% of its full size to reduce occlusion.

Carrying out each of these operations once is no problem.  Repeat 100 times and there is a problem.

The NodeXL team completed another phase of our automation feature, allowing users to build a refined graph with any set of configuration that can be applied to any number of other networks.

Along with the automated collection system, NodeXL can now generate a regular stream of network graphs from social media sources.

2010 – June – NodeXL Book Flyer.

[Chapter 10]: Twitter: Conversation, Entertainment and Information, All in One Network!

By Vladimir Barash and Scott Golder

[Chapter 11]: Visualizing and Interpreting Facebook Networks

By Bernie Hogan

[Chapter 12]: WWW Hyperlink Networks

By Robert Ackland

[Chapter 13]: Flickr: Linking People, Photos, and Tags

By Eduarda Mendes Rodrigues and Natasa Milic-Frayling

[Chapter 14]: YouTube: Contrasting Patterns of Interaction and Prominence

By Dana Rotman and Jennifer Golbeck

[Chapter 15]: Wiki Networks: Networks of Creativity and Collaboration

By Howard T Welser, Patrick Underwood, Dan Cosley, Derek Hansen, and Laura Black

This handy poster contains many details about the book contributors, chapters, and the book cover (which you can also see below):

Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL: Insights from a Connected World

The NodeXL team has released a new version (v.1.0.1.126) with better support for collecting data from social media network sources, starting with Twitter.  The NodeXL Network Server program now ships in every NodeXL installation.  Tony, the lead developer on the team, created the following FAQ to explain how to use the collector application.

This document describes how the NodeXL Network Server works.

• What is the NodeXL Network Server?

It’s a Windows command-line program that downloads a network from Twitter and stores the network on disk in several file formats.  It can be run directly from a command line, but is typically scheduled to run on a periodic basis via the Task Scheduler that is built into Windows.

• Where can the files be found?

The files are in NodeXL’s program folder.  To find out where the folder is, right-click the Microsoft NodeXL, Excel 2007 Template menu item in the Windows Start menu, then select Properties.  On 32-bit English computers, the folder is “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Research\Microsoft NodeXL Excel Template.”

• Who are its intended users?

The Server is meant for use by people with moderate system administration skills.  It is not difficult to use, but it is not intended for the same audience as the NodeXL Excel Template, where ease of use is of high priority.

• How do you run the Server from the Windows command line?

Like this:

NodeXLNetworkServer.exe NetworkConfiguration.xml

The program takes a single argument, which is the path to a configuration file that specifies which network should be downloaded and how the network should be saved to disk.  A particular configuration file might specify “Get the Twitter search network for people whose tweets contain ‘Sociology,’ add an edge for each ‘mentions’ relationship, limit to 100 people, include tweets, include statistics, and store the network as a GraphML file in the C:\NodeXLNetworks folder.”

The program immediately gets the requested network, saves it to disk, and exits.  On its own, it does not run on a periodic basis.

• How do I create a configuration file?

You create a configuration file by copying a provided template file and editing the copy in Notepad.  The template file is named SampleNetworkConfiguration.xml and is stored in the same folder as the program.  The file is in XML format and the XML tags are clearly named and documented.

• In what file formats can be the network be saved to disk?

You can save the network to either GraphML, which can be imported into a NodeXL workbook; directly to a NodeXL workbook; or both.

• Do you typically run the program from the command line?

No.  Instead, you typically run it as a scheduled task via a built-in Windows program called Task Scheduler

Task Scheduler is a powerful utility that lets your run any program, including NodeXL Network Server, on a periodic basis.  You can, for example, tell Task Scheduler to run NodeXL Network Server using a particular network configuration file every twelve hours starting June 1, 2010 and ending June 30, 2010; or once a week starting now and continuing forever.  The scheduling options are endless.

• Why not just include scheduling features in the NodeXL Network Server?

For two reasons.  First, Task Scheduler’s extensive scheduling options would be difficult to duplicate.  Second, if NodeXL Network Server had to download a network on a periodic basis, it would have to run as a Windows service, and Windows services are more complex to implement and to use than a simple command-line program.

• How are the network files named?

Scheduling the NodeXL Network Server to run periodically can create any number of network files in the specified directory, so a file-naming scheme is needed.  The file name format is

{NetworkConfigFileName}_{Date}_{Time}.{Extension}.

So the above example, in which NetworkConfiguration.xml specifies that networks are to be saved as GraphML, might create a set of network files that look like this:

NetworkConfiguration_2010-06-01_02-00-00.graphml
NetworkConfiguration_2010-06-01_14-00-00. graphml
NetworkConfiguration_2010-06-02_02-00-00. graphml
…

• What happens if the computer is not turned on at the scheduled time?

By default, the task won’t be performed until the next scheduled time when the computer is turned on.  However, if the computer is sleeping, you can tell Task Scheduler to wake it at the scheduled time to run the task.

• What happens if the NodeXL Network Server encounters an error?

If the error prevents the network from being downloaded, the NodeXL Network Server creates an error file instead of a network file.  The file name starts with “Error” to make it easy to spot:

Error_NetworkConfiguration_2010-06-02_14-00-00.txt

The error file contains the details of what went wrong.

If one or more errors block part of the network but other parts of the network are successfully downloaded, then the NodeXL Network Server creates the network file containing the partial network, along with a text file that explains how many errors occurred.  The text file name starts with “PartialNetworkInfo” to make it easy to spot:

NetworkConfiguration_2010-06-02_14-00-00.Graphml
PartialNetworkInfo_NetworkConfiguration_Date.txt

• What if I want to periodically download more than one network?

Simply schedule more than one task, each using a different network configuration file.  The tasks are independent of one another and can be scheduled to run at different times.

Many network graphs contain disconnected smaller graphs, called “components”, within them.

Most layout algorithms do a poor job of managing to group each component in a separate space. Instead, often, components are laid over one another, suggesting connections that are not real.

A simple solution we have implemented in NodeXL is to offer to sweep up all the smaller components in the graph and order them in neat rows at the bottom of the canvas.  This feature was mentioned in a previous post, but finding the feature may not be obvious:

From the NodeXL network graph canvas toolbar, select the drop down menu next to the selected layout type.

This will display the following menu of layout choices and options:

Select the last option: “Layout Options…”

Which reveals:

Select the option: “Put the graph’s smaller components at the bottom of the graph“.  This dialog also presents other options related to how long the Fruchterman-Reingold layout should calculate and how strong the parameter that governs the force that pushes nodes away from one another should be.  You may find that changing these values improves the FR layout for your data.

Here is a graph that is mapped without the component ordering feature selected.  Many components are scattered around the chart.

This image represents the connections among a population of Twitter users who mentioned the term “Cisco“.  This chart was created using the Fruchterman-Reingold layout.  It is noisy and messy given the nature of the graph it has to render.

The Harel-Koren layout option is better but has a significant flaw: all the isolates are jumbled on top of one another in that smear at the center of the ring in the upper left of the graph.

Here is the same graph created with the Harel-Koren layout with the added  ”Put the graph’s smaller components at the bottom of the graph” option selected:

All the many lightly connected Twitter authors are lined up in size order (size is mapped to the number of followers that user has in Twitter).  This removes them from getting in the way of the “giant component”, the big connected group of Twitter users who both tweet the word “cisco” but also follow, mention, or reply to someone else who also mentioned the word “cisco”.  The core of this group is visible along with some peripheral groups or people who both mention the company and talk to other people who do as well.  The isolates mention Cisco but do not do so as part of a larger conversation (as seen at the time of this snapshot).

An additional tip: nodes are plotted on the screen in NodeXL in an order governed by the “Layout Order” column in the Vertices worksheet.  If we use the “Autofill Columns” feature we can easily set the Vertex Layout Order to the same value to which Vertex Size was set.  This has the effect of lining up the nodes by size, making a kind of histogram.  All the singletons or isolates, the nodes with no connections to any other node, line up first, then the dyads, the triads, and the quads.  Each larger sized component sorts from its smallest to its largest by the size of the largest node in the component.

This is a map of the recent connections among twitter users who tweeted the string “NodeXL”.  Each profile photo is scaled to the number of followers that person has.  In this image one author node is right-clicked and reveals some useful options.  Highlighted in the image is the option to open the twitter page for this person.  Also of use is the Edit Selected Vertex Properties option where nodes can have their labels moved around (top, bottom, left, etc) and switched on and off in the graph.

Right-click features appear elsewhere in the application.  It is worth poking at things with the right-click menu but we will be working on surfacing these options more clearing in forthcoming releases.

You can add your own right-click menus to your own networks by using the custom vertex menu option.  Find out how after the jump.

Select the “Customize” button from the “Menus” section:

This leads to:

Select Yes and you will have two new columns in your workbook on the vertices worksheet.  One column contains information that is used in the menu label.  The second column contains any URL that will be executed when the menu item is selected.

These new control elements allow for the selection of a set of nodes (arrow), the addition of another set of nodes to the selected collection (arrow with plus), and the removal of a selected set of nodes from the existing selected collection (arrow with minus).  In addition the “hand” icon allows the user to move the view pane over network (or move the network beneath the view pane).  The mouse wheel still zooms in and out for getting detailed views of small areas of the graph.

These added controls should provide addition flexibility for managing a complex graph.

Time for another NodeXL update: sparklines!  Sparklines are a nifty and compact way of displaying a line chart in a small area.

Setting dynamic filters in NodeXL has been somewhat like rummaging around in the dark: without a way to see the distribution beneath a filter the user only knows the max and min values, not where the bulk of the observed data is located.  This version of NodeXL (1.0.1.111) features an improvement to the Dynamic Filters feature used to limit the nodes and edges displayed in the network visualization pane.  Earlier versions of Dynamic Filters allowed users to select a range for each attribute associated with the Edges and Vertices worksheet.  In the last version of NodeXLwe added an automated feature for creating those distribution histograms and placing them in a stack on the Overall Metrics worksheet after the user runs the “Graph Metrics” feature.  That is helpful but the worksheet is far from the user when they are setting the ranges within the Dynamic Filters dialog.  Now, the current release adds “sparklines” to the Dynamic Filters dialog box: as you set the upper and lower bounds for any network edge or vertex attribute, you can see how much of the distribution is included and excluded in the display.

This is one of several features added to NodeXL to make it easier for users to explore their networks and find actionable insights.  We have added sparklines in the dynamic filters interface in NodeXL so that you can now see the shape of a value’s distribution as you set the maximum and minimum values to be included in the filter.  Histograms also now appear in the Overall Metrics tab of the NodeXL worksheet where they convey the distribution of the major network attributes in the graph.