Financial cartography: Network layouts

Kimmo Soramäki and Samantha Cook

The placement of nodes in a network visualisation can greatly affect how informative the visualisation is. For example, the placement of nodes in Figure 7.3 emphasises the importance of the Danish krone, and the other nodes are arranged in a circle sorted by their correlation to DKK, making the strength of relationships easy to see and compare. One strategy utilised in various layout algorithms to best show network structure is to place the nodes so as to minimise the number of link crossings. Depending on the type of network and the goals of the visualisation, however, other properties may be more desirable. For instance, in a network with a strong community structure, the most important factor may be closeness of nodes in the same community. This chapter discusses many different layout algorithms for network visualisation, with real data examples of each.

We will illustrate the layout algorithms presented in this chapter using a network of annual remittance data (focusing on the year 2018) compiled by the World Bank.¹¹ See https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/migrationremittancesdiasporaissues/brief/migration-remittances-data. The network contains 212 nodes, which are mostly