It's very easy to become enamoured with the visualisations and potential of network analysis, and see it as an end unto itself. This is one reason why I think that network analysis is a diagnostic methodology. It can aid understanding, but there are obvious limitations. For example any visualisation is a representation, or report of, data collected at particular time in a particular place. We all now human systems are dynamic, so it's reasonable to assume data will degrade and the network will change.
It is also a common mistake to think the visualisation, or the data matrix, represent analysis: they do not! I think
Drew Conway , who is a political scientist, makes the point very well when he says: ...
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26th June 2009, 02:50 PM
Visualisations Are Not Everything! 
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