Shannon entropy in time-varying semantic networks of titles of scientific paper

Abstract

Recent work has employed information theory in social and complex networks. Studies often discuss entropy in the degree distributions of a network. However, no specific work on entropy exists in clique networks. This work is an extension of a previous study that discussed this topic. We propose a method for calculating the entropy of a clique network and its minimum and maximum values in temporal semantic networks based on titles of scientific papers. In addition, the critical network of moments was extracted. We use the titles of scientific papers published in Nature and Science over ten-year period. The results show the diversity of vocabulary over time, based on the entropy values of vertices and edges. In each critical network, we discover the paths that connect important words and an interesting modular structure.

Professional identity and experience of undergraduate students: an analysis of semantic networks

“…With the IF index acting as a filter, it is possible to identify an optimal network configuration, known as the critical network. Critical networks gain relevance for being a type of network that contains maximum representative information with minimum textual residue (Cunha et al, 2020). To obtain these networks, seven successive steps were followed.…”

“…After calculating the IF of each word pair, it was possible to identify a critical point responsible for a structural change in the network, that is, from that point, the removal of another word pair dissolves the network (Teixeira et al, 2010). Thus, to identify the main axes of the meaning attributed by each group to professional identity, a progressive filtering process was conducted through IF calculation (Cunha et al, 2020;Teixeira et al, 2010). All word pairs with IF below this limit value were removed from the semantic network, which allowed identifying the critical network of professional identity for each one of the three researched groups.…”

“…The network resulting from this process has a pattern that represents the discourse with maximum information and minimum textual residue. In this configuration, the critical network contains word pairs with a high association power, responsible for keeping the network connected (Cunha et al, 2020). In addition to being used as a criterion to reach the critical network of meaning, the IF was used as a strength parameter to measure the relationship between word pairs.…”

“…A semantic clique network is a system to represent the knowledge established by a specific context and imbued with intention of functionality, in which vertices are words or concepts with meaning, the smallest unit of meaning is the sentence (for instance, a set of words uttered by an individual), and edges connect two words belonging to the same sentence (Cunha, Santos, Moret, & Pereira, 2020;Nascimento et al, 2018). Several authors have used this model, for instance, in oral discourse (Lima-Neto et al, 2018;Teixeira et al, 2010), in semantic networks of titles of scientific articles and course descriptions (Andrade, Barreto, Cunha, Ribeiro, & Pereira, 2019;Pereira et al, 2016), as well as in networks of uttered words (Lopes et al, 2015).…”

Entropy has a Great Potential to Steer Education above and Beyond

“…To provide a comprehensive review of entropy applications can sometimes prove to be impossible. Furthermore, the motivations behind incorporating entropy into knowledge areas such as information theory, queueing theory, engineering, and computation were examined (Cunha, 2020).…”