Bipartite Network gets a Makeover

I guess my research is slowly changing focus and is more and more about some kind of data science (although I still bill myself as a physicist turned network scientist). While statistics and mathematical models are still driving this type of research, an increasingly important part of data science is visualization - finding neat ways to display subtle and complicated mathematical concepts in a way that is immediately understandable. Sometimes, however, visualization can be completely gratuitous eye-candy. Last week, I played around with displaying a weighted bipartite network. One of the default layouts looked something like this: Adding Bezier curves, more pleasing node shapes, and a little color, the final network comes across slightly more pleasing to the eye (in my opinion, anyway): Stay tuned for the next episode of ‘Pimp my Network’.