This is the first of several posts I made to a now-defunct list on networks, network science and political work. This one is from 3/03.

One of the concepts in network science is that not all nodes are equal; that is, some nodes are better connected than others, that is they have more links to other nodes. They are "well-connected". And network science even goes further to suggest that the distribution of these well-connected nodes in a network follows certain laws. Rather than a random distribution (if graphed, it wd look like a bell curve), the distribution follows a "power law" distribution. An example of a power law wd be that half as many nodes have twice as many links, or, a few nodes have many links, and most nodes have few links

The distribution of the "well-connected" nodes, aka hubs, gives a network a
particular character.

This suggests a particular strategy to linking up.

jd