[Reading] The Structure and Function of Complex Networks

This paper reviews recent work on the structure and function of networked systems such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, social networks, networks of citations between papers, and many others. The study of networks, in the form of mathematical graph theory, is one of the fundamental pillars of discrete mathematics. Networks have also been studied extensively in the social sciences.

This paper mainly describes three parts:
(1) Empirical studies of the structure of networks, including social networks, information networks, technological networks and biological networks.
(2) Some of the common properties that are observed in many of these networks, how they are measured, and why they are believed to be important for the functioning of networked systems.
(3) The mathematical modeling of networks, including random graph models and their generalizations, exponential random graphs, and Markov graphs, the small-world model and its variations, and models of growing graphs including preferential attachment models and their many variations.