Social and Economic Networks

The purpose of the course is to provide an introduction to social and economic networks. A key focus is on understanding concepts and methods used for, and derived from, analyzing such networks. Most of these methods are central to the operations of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon. Among these are methods for identifying segments (communities) in networks; methods that are used by Google to rank search results, by Amazon to recommend products, and by Twitter to recommend customized stories and other individuals for a user to follow; auctions used for selling products as varied as flowers, tuna, art and search keywords; methods used by Facebook for placing advertising in a users newsfeed; and mechanisms used for matching students to schools, cars to passengers (e.g., Uber, Lyft), and kidneys to patients.