COM 360 – Exercise 1
The substance of this assignment is to reproduce the Krebs terrorist network. The purpose of the assignment is to familiarize yourself with creating and manipulating networks in NodeXL. Before you begin this assignment, you must have a working copy of NodeXL installed on your computer.
Here are the steps you should follow:
1. Download the Krebs article.
2. Refer to Fig. 2, the network of Trusted Prior Contacts. Referring to this network, enter the 27 edges, one at a time, into NodeXL. You will need to spell out the Hijackers’ names yourself, but you can also use Excel copying to help you along.
3. Display the graph. Use NodeXL features to label the vertices, change their colors and shapes, and position them. As you work, you should lock your vertices so that the nodes are not moved by NodeXL algorithms after you have placed them.
4. Make your graph look as much as possible like Figure 2’s network of trusted prior contacts. You will be graded on how close you come to the original. You do not have to worry about the legend or the figure title. Several of the hijackers’ names have asterisks; you may omit the asterisks. Furthermore, because of NodeXL limitations, there are two things you will not be able to do. First, you will not have black labels; they will be the same color as their corresponding vertex. Second, you will not be able to line up the labels flush left with their vertices. Instead, make them bottom right, except for Majed Moqed and Zied Jarrah, which should be bottom center.
5. When your graph is as close as you want it to be, be sure to lock your vertices. Otherwise, when I open the file it will re-layout the graph and it won’t look anything like you want it to. LOCK YOUR VERTICES!
6. Save your final file. Name with the following format: FamilynameGivenname.xlsx For example, if I were a student in the class, I would name my file TutzauerFrank.xlsx. This is important because it will help me know who turned in what.
7. Post your file to learns. When you do so, put your name in the Comment field.
Grading Criteria
• 20 points for the accuracy of the network
• 20 points for the overall impression of the network
• 50 points of nuts and bolts of the network (nodes/edges placement, size, color, shape, labels)
• 10 points for following directions