Degree Distribution - Definition

Definition

The degree of a node in a network (sometimes referred to incorrectly as the connectivity) is the number of connections or edges the node has to other nodes. If a network is directed, meaning that edges point in one direction from one node to another node, then nodes have two different degrees, the in-degree, which is the number of incoming edges, and the out-degree, which is the number of outgoing edges.

The degree distribution P(k) of a network is then defined to be the fraction of nodes in the network with degree k. Thus if there are n nodes in total in a network and nk of them have degree k, we have P(k) = nk/n.

The same information is also sometimes presented in the form of a cumulative degree distribution, the fraction of nodes with degree greater than or equal to k.

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