Networks

The network grows as more years are introduced. However, this also means that the web of people becomes more difficult to read. Luckily, the years are separated into colors which means it is slightly easier to pick out connections. Interestingly, many years start a new sub-group of people and most do not have connections to the years prior. I consider these groups the outliers as they are not present on the graph when it’s zoomed in. This leads to a conclusion that new people must either be coming to town or joining the congregation each year, regardless of if they know someone. The biggest nodes on the map belong to John Wemp and Mary Butler, who are also connected. I do not necessarily understand why this is but both have many connections on the map from various years and those connections make more connections as well.

I originally thought that, given the size of the names, the size of the dots, and amount of connections over the years, John Wemp and Mary Butler were the central nodes of the map for betweeness centrality. I am assumed this is because they are mentioned most in the original data or perhaps it is because of the amount of connections. However, when filtering through Carto, Anna Clement shows as the biggest node. I tried again for degree centrality and was surprised again. Althought there were some bigger nodes, no one stuck out the way Anna Clement did in the last one.

The clusters are better able to show how every one is connected through a few degrees of separation. Unsurprisingly, when clustered, Anna Clement had the third most amount of nodes (59). In second was Mary Butler who I had took notice of in other variations of the graph. However, I was surprised to see Cornelius Bowen’s name at the top of the list with 92 nodes. This was mainly because I did not consider if important when looking at other variations of the map.

Just an aside, when I filtered for just 1736, there were several node clusters bouncing around in a pentagram form, so I’m pretty sure that was the year everyone decided to try paganism.