For this particular assignment, Bryan and I analyzed the data from the Baptized Indians Database. We were able to do so by using Gephi visualizations. Using Gephi help reveal patterns and also allowed us to explore and manipulate the data to point out trends of the baptism relationships between Native Americans during the time. We first started by making edges for the people we were assigned to with the ID 175-225. For our visualization, we ended up with 97 nodes and 86 edges. Each node specifically represents a Native American who fell under our category while the edges show the numerous interconnections made between the natives. When we first saw this visualization below we were confused to say the less about what Gephi was trying to show us due to a couple connections that weren’t found on the spreadsheet thus making it hard to follow along initially. You can only see some connections however its hard to follow along because of the lines crossing one another. We then proceeded to play around with Gephi in order to get a better understanding of the data.
[gview file=”http://humn2702018.blogs.bucknell.edu/files/2018/04/raw-version-1.pdf”]
We first started my adding color (modularity) to our visualization to help further break down the data given. By adding color to the graph Gephi allows the viewer to see what group each person is linked with. By doing this it gives a viewer an easier graph to look at compared to the visualization we started out with each node being the same color. You are now able to see the different communities within this visualization.
[gview file=”http://humn2702018.blogs.bucknell.edu/files/2018/04/modularity.pdf”]
We decided to break it down even more and looking at the different connections between each of the communities. In this visualization to highlight the interaction between each person(node), we decided to adjust the size of the nodes according to their class and rank. Furthermore one can imply by looking at this visualization to see how Christianity was spread back then which was usually through marriage which explains the connection between the different color nodes.
[gview file=”http://humn2702018.blogs.bucknell.edu/files/2018/04/indiansmarinekf.pdf”]
The last feature we decided to use was a visualization showing their names and the various relationships between each baptized person. This visualization shows how each person is either related somehow or come in contact with each other. The color of each node depends on their activeness within their community and spread of Christianity. I find this visualization more meaningful than the others because it shows the overlap of the communities and how they networked back then as well it shows you the more important people in the groups.
[gview file=”http://humn2702018.blogs.bucknell.edu/files/2018/04/noverlap.pdf”]
In conclusion, Bryan and I believe Gephi is a helpful visualization site but it can be very difficult at operating sometimes. Overall we both struggled with learning how to use Gephi but are very appreciative of being able to learn how to use another visualization site. However, as time passed Bryan became more comfortable in using the site compared to me. Compared to other tools we’ve used before Gephi isn’t the most user-friendly and because of this, it can be tough at pulling and analyzing the data with this visualization tool. We quickly realized though as we added more features to our data the more knowledge we were able to gain. We like that you could play around with some tools from the site however we both said we wish it could be more interactive like voyant or jigsaw which both had an ultimate amount of resources to play with and extract data from.
