Graphs are everywhere - also in Religious Texts - part 6 and close - Analysing the Hadith Narrator Graph

So what we will do here, is we will start looking at some of the structural graph metrics that are going to give us a little bit more insight into the importance of different parts of the Hadith Narrator Graph. We will use the Neuler Graph Data Science playground to do that. Neuler is a so-called GraphApp that you can easily install into your Neo4j Desktop environment. You can download and install it, and learn more about it here.

Once installed, we will run a few easy algo's.

Pagerank centrality of the Scholars

Once of the advantages of the AGGREGATED_HADITH_CHAIN relationship, is that we now have a mono-partite, weighted subgraph that is very suitable for understanding which Scholars are actually more interesting than others - this is a great use case for the Pagerank algorithm. Here's how we configure it:

Graphs are everywhere - also in Religious Texts - part 5 - Exploring the Hadith Narrator Graph

Before we can start that exploration, we do need to put in place a few additional indexes that have not yet been created in the import process: on the english translations of the hadiths, and on the scholar names. That's simple operation:

CREATE TEXT INDEX hadith_text_en FOR (h:Hadith) ON (h.text_en);
CREATE TEXT INDEX scholar_name FOR (s:Scholar) ON (s.name);

Note that these indexes are not full text indexes - but they are more optimised for text fields.

The model now looks like this: 

So now we can start some querying. This query gives us a flavour of what we could find:

MATCH (:Scholar)--(n:Hadith)--(:Source)
RETURN n LIMIT 25;

Graphs are everywhere - also in Religious Texts - part 4 - Connect the Hadiths with the scholars

Now, we will connect the Hadiths with the scholars:

:auto MATCH (h:Hadith)
WITH h, split(replace(h.chain_indx," ",""),",") as scholarlist
CALL
    {
    WITH h, scholarlist
    UNWIND scholarlist as scholar
        MATCH (s:Scholar {scholar_indx: scholar})
        MERGE (s)-[:NARRATED]->(h)
    } IN TRANSACTIONS OF 100 ROWS;

Graphs are everywhere - also in Religious Texts - part 3 - Importing the Hadiths into Neo4j

Again, just like in part 2, we will use the Neo4j Data Importer for this. You can find the .zip file with the model and the dataset over here. In this operation we actually first create a separate subgraph for the Hadiths and the sources:

 This operation returns very quickly:  And offers a good view of the result: 

Graphs are everywhere - also in Religious Texts - part 2 - import the Hadith narrators into Neo4j

The source data that we found in part 1 is in a .csv format - so that means that it basically looks tabular:

Luckily, we nowadays have some fantastic tools to import these files, without writing any code at all using the all new Neo4j Data Importer. After drawing a few nodes and relationships, I was able to do the basic import:  It was super quick to return after a few seconds: 

Graphs are everywhere - also in Religious Texts - part 1 - Introduction

This is going to be an interesting and in some ways even fascinating set of blogposts. I have thoroughly enjoyed researching it and playing around with the latest and greates Neo4j tools while doing so, but I must say that it's also one of the first blogposts that I can remember where I am a bit uneasy about the content. Why? Because it's about, or at least in some ways touches, religion.

First let's start with some background here. Some things that you should know about me:

• I was born and raised in Belgium, which is - or at least was - a predominantly Catholic Christian country. There's churches and chapels on every corner of the street here.
• My parents were/are far from religious, never took me to church, but did give me many of the Catholic Christian values - and these were engrained in me even more clearly because of my 13 ears in Jesuit schools in Antwerp and Turnhout.
• as an adult, I became increasingly distantiated from all religious beliefs. In my twenties and thirties I was still a "cultural Christian", I guess, as exemplified by the fact that we got married in church, and baptised all of our 3 children. In my late thirties and forties, ie. now, I becaome convinced that not much good can come of religion - in general. I read Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and similar authors that have a very sceptic, atheist view on religion. And I like it that way, for me, personally.
• that personal choice does not mean that I have something against people that still have a faith. I am totally fine with anyone believing what they want to believe - as longs as they don't hurt others or impose on others during the process.

But, and here's the sensitive bit: this blogpost will be about Islam - and Moslim holy books and texts very specifically. There's no reason for me choosing to write about this specific religion - other than the fact that it came across my path and I thought some of the material was absolutely fascinating.

Conway's Game of Life in Neo4j

A couple of weeks ago, me and my Neo4j Breakfast Club friends were just freewheeling our way into the day, and one of my colleagues started talking to me about Conway's Game of Life.. I had never heard of this thing, but was immediately fascinated. It basically allows you to simulate evolution in a rudimentary and simplified kind of way, but it's really fascinating how it works based on a very simple set of rules (see below). There's an entire Wiki dedicated just to this "game" - it's one of the most wonderful rabbitholes on the web that I have ever seen. Just take a look at this example and you will see the idea in action:

The Game of Life, also known simply as Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring no further input. One interacts with the Game of Life by creating an initial configuration and observing how it evolves. It is Turing complete and can simulate a universal constructor or any other Turing machine.

So when I heard about it, I immediately thought that it would be a ton of fun to run this experiment in Neo4j. Why? Because the rules are all about connections between members of a population. Things will evolve - or not - based on their connectivity.