Zachary's karate club

Zachary's Karate Club is a well-known social network of a university karate club described in "An Information Flow Model for Conflict and Fission in Small Groups" paper by Wayne W. Zachary.

Network description

Network of Zachary's Karate Club. Distribution by degree of the node. Node 1 stands for the instructor, node 34 for the president

A social network of a karate club was studied by Wayne W. Zachary for a period of three years from 1970 to 1972.[1] The network captures 34 members of a karate club, documenting 78 pairwise links between members who interacted outside the club.[2] During the study a conflict arose between the administrator "John A" and instructor "Mr. Hi" (pseudonyms), which led to the split of the club into two. Half of the members formed a new club around Mr. Hi, members from the other part found a new instructor or gave up karate. Basing on collected data Zachary assigned correctly all but one member of the club to the groups they actually joined after the split.

Zachary's methodology

Before the split each side tried to recruit adherents of another party. Thus, communication flow had a special importance and the initial group would likely split at the "borders" of the network. Zachary used the maximum flow – minimum cut Ford–Fulkerson algorithm from “source” Mr. Hi to “sink” John A: the cut closest to Mr. Hi that cuts saturated edges divides the network into the two factions. Zachary correcly predicted each member's decision except member #9, who went with Mr. Hi instead of John A.

Data set

The data set for Zachary's karate club is in open access on the internet.[3] .

Zachary Karate Club Club

Zachary Karate Club Club is a club which awards a scientist who is the first to use Zachary's Karate Club as an example at any conference on networks. The first scientist to be awarded was Cristopher Moore[4]

References

  1. ↑ Wayne W. Zachary. "An Information Flow Model for Conflict and Fission in Small Groups". University of New Mexico. JSTOR 3629752.
  2. ↑ Barabási, Albert-László (2015). Network Science (PDF). Cambridge University Press.
  3. ↑ Zachary's Karate Club data set
  4. ↑ "Network Scientists with Karate Trophies". Retrieved 2015-06-05.

External links

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