Mapping Mivami: Analyzing Relationships in the Talmud.

Abstract

Humans are inherently social beings. Humanity thrives on social interactions and discerns information from social contextual clues. Relationships in a social network have meaning and real-life implications. Relationships in a social network can significantly impact the structure of society. In trying to more deeply understand the nature of relationships among a particular dataset, discovering patterns can help predict certain characteristics of that social network. To examine such patterns, one must look at the varying factors surrounding the personalities within their social network and discover significant associations between the players which indicate strong social ties. Computational methods can provide insight into discovering these patterns and in developing tools to create heuristics with which we can analyze a wide variety of sources. In this paper we are going to see how various techniques can help us make inferences about the relationships between certain Talmudic figures and build these heuristic tools. (from Introduction)