Ivory Towers
In Hollywood, there is a game and computer science problem known as the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" in which almost any actor can be linked to Kevin Bacon through a number of movies and other actors. For most actors the number of links is less than 6, and a 10-link chain is the longest that currently exists. I analyzed the Scholars@Duke co-authorship network dataset to find the longest chains that exist between pair of faculty through their mutual co-authors and journal articles. My analysis found there are currently several chains in the dataset that are 13 links long. The following visualizations and slides present a case study of one these chains that links 14 faculty members across a number of disciplines. Some descriptions and comparisons between academia and Hollywood are presented, and this case study shows some interesting trends. All the Scholars@Duke Profiles and Paper Pages are linked in the slides allowing further exploration. The goal of this visualization was to examine the geographic spread of collaborations represented in the scholars@duke dataset. The goal of the Scholars@Duke Visualization Challenge was to create visualizations that capture the richness and dynamism of Duke research. The datasets were provided by Scholars@Duke (https://schoalrs.duke.edu/) and they describe publications, authorships, and scholarly collaborations from university researchers over the past 5 years.
