Network visualisation - how to tame the complexity?

Not so long ago, the problem of network visualisation was simple. The networks were either small enough to draw them by hand and manually position the nodes or not complex enough to cause troubles to specialised layout algorithms. Everything changed with the recent increase in network sizes. Manual method became extremely time consuming and the algorithms were no longer able to generate clean and readable layouts. We stuck in a world of messy hair balls, almost impossible to analyse.

Although conceptually a network is strongly related to a graph, it is not necessary to visualise it as nodes and edges. Many alternative methods exist. They often go beyond the static image generation and create dynamic, interactive, explorable structures. During this talk I am going to present an overview of the non-standard methods and demonstrate some "live" examples, including a bit of my own work on gene co-expression networks.