It’s been a couple months, but I really want to just finish this book completely. So I’m picking up where I left off. Network analysis is a way of looking at graphs (nodes, vertices, and edges) and determining information about the overall structure and the relationships inside of it.

Not too much to say here other than I’ve developed another skill.

I finally created some time to work with the ATMI data.

After I finished off the book, there have been a couple things I’ve been working on for the class.

I’ve spent a bit of time over the last week coding up different types of graphs.

I’ve confirmed with the Southern Nevada Health District that I will be volunteering with them for about 20 hours per week during the Fall semester. And this is starting off with some paperwork stuff. Even though I probably won’t start until August 24, I’m trying to make sure everything is in place as soon as I can get it there.

I didn’t quite meet my goal of finishing the book by the end of last week. I got a little bogged down in a couple chapters. The chapter on exploratory factor analysis was particularly confusing, and I don’t really feel as though I really understand what’s happening. I do vaguely understand that it’s a linear algebra thing that uses some type of principal component analysis technique to reorganize the data. But the concepts that go into the analysis itself were presented in a way that I just couldn’t follow. This may be something I’ll have to investigate later if I need these techniques for something. But after spending a couple days trying to push through it, I’ve decided to just skip it and move on to the last two chapters.