REINTERPRETING NETWORK MEASURES FOR MODELS OF DISEASE TRANSMISSION

Several network measures have been defined elsewhere that quantify the distance between two nodes, and the centrality of a node, in a network. Recently, Stephenson and Zelen have presented a new measure based on statistical estimation theory and applied it to a network of AIDS cases. We show that their measure can be reinterpreted as the electrical conductance in an electrical network and compare it with three other closeness measures: maximal flow, first passage time, and random hitting time. An improved algorithm for calculating the Stephenson and Zelen measure is also presented.