Network

Draws the parts as nodes and the links between them as edges, so hubs, bridges, clusters, and indirect paths become visible.

The same argument with your sister has run four times this year. Always the same holiday weekend, always the same ending, always nothing booked. You have replayed what the two of you said and you have both apologised. What you have never drawn is the plain fact that the two of you have not spoken about it directly once. Every round went through your mother.

Network draws the parts as nodes and the connections between them as edges. Once both are on the page, things appear that no list of pairs contains. A hub is a node carrying far more edges than the rest. A bridge is a node or an edge that, if it went away, would leave two groups unable to reach each other at all. A cluster is a set of nodes that mostly connect among themselves. An isolate connects to nothing. An indirect path is a route between two nodes that runs through a third, and that is where most of the surprises live.

It has five common renderers. A node-link diagram places nodes freely and draws every edge, which suits a graph you are still exploring. Hub and spoke fixes one node in the center and fans the rest around it, for a graph you already know has a center. A chord diagram sits the nodes on a circle and draws links across the middle, which reads well for who exchanged something with whom. An arc diagram lays the nodes on a line and arches the links above it, keeping an order you care about. A social graph is a node-link diagram whose nodes are people and whose edges are named relationships.