New Post: Graph to visualize common attributes

Hello!

Thank you for the interest in NodeXL.

Networks can be composed of a single type of entity (unimodal) or multiple types of entities (multimodal).

Connections in a network can all be of the same type (uniplex) or contain many types of connections (multiplex).

Networks are expressed in NodeXL in the form of:

 Entity 1, Entity 2, Connection type, Connection Attributes, Entity 1 Attributes, Entity 2 Attributes

I would rewrite the relationships you describe above in the following form:

 Alice, Pizza, (Alice is) Female
 Bob, Pizza, (Bob is) Male
 Charlie, Pasta, (Charlie is) Male

In this case the Vertex Gender is an attribute of the Vertex but is not represented as a connection to a Vertex called "Male" or "Female".

If you do want "Male" and "Female" to be an Entity in the network (which would be odd but you may have your reasons), you would create the following edges:

 Alice, Pizza
 Alice, Female
 Bob, Pizza
 Bob, Male
 Charlie, Pasta
 Charlie, Male

But now you have the issue of have not just two modes of Entities (People and Foods), now you have three modes of Entities (People, Foods, and Genders).

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Marc