Valued Ties Tell Fewer Lies, II: Why Not To Dichotomize Network Edges With Bounded Outdegrees

Abstract

Various methods have been proposed for creating a binary version of a complex network with valued ties. Rather than the default method of choosing a single threshold value about which to dichotomize, we consider a method of choosing the highest k outbound arcs from each person and assigning a binary tie, as this has the advantage of minimizing the isolation of nodes that may otherwise be weakly connected. However, simulations and real data sets establish that this method is worse than the default thresholding method and should not be generally considered to deal with valued networks.