If deemed necessary, reported comments will be removed within 7 - 10 days but usually sooner. Please submit this report ONLY if you STRONGLY believe this needs to be removed. Multiple illegitimate reports slow down the administrative process of removing the actual and more seriously unfavorable content.

Poster Name:
Social Network Guru

Poster Message:
Descriptive statistical tools are really just algorithms for summarizing characteristics of the distributions of scores. That is, they are mathematical operations. Where statistics really become "statistical" is on the inferential side. That is, when our attention turns to assessing the reproducibility or likelihood of the pattern that we have described. Inferential statistics can be, and are, applied to the analysis of network data. But, there are some quite important differences between the flavors of inferential statistics used with network data, and those that are most commonly taught in basic courses in statistical analysis in sociology. Suppose, for example, that I was interested in the proportion of the actors in a network who were members of cliques (or any other network statistic or parameter). The notion of a clique implies structure -- non-random connections among actors. I have data on a network of ten nodes, in which there are 20 symmetric ties among actors, and I observe