Relational Calculator - A Tool for Analyzing Social Networks

Andrej Mrvar and Vladimir Batagelj

A relational network consists of units interconnected by binary relation(s). For computational purposes relations are often represented by binary matrices. Representation by directed graphs is used to visualize networks or to give intuitive meaning to some notions.

Many operations on relations and their properties used for analyzing and describing a network structure can be found in literature. Beside matrices, two additional types of objects are needed to define these operations: clusterings and permutations. They are connected by many operations and transformations which form a powerful system for expressing and solving network analysis problems.

In this paper we describe a program RelCalc (Relational Calculator) which implements a computational system for these three data types. Some examples of application of the program are also presented.