Setsuzoku

Social Network Analysis is very dependent on computation. Because while it's easy enough to visualize and analyze "toy" networks with your intuition, things start getting out of hand once we're dealing with real world actors and their interactions. 

I used to collect Social Network Analysis programs - I even thought I could build one myself. Thankfully, the open source movement came into its own before I could commit that folly. 

Professor Teramoto is using R for his class. I think that's the best long term solution. R offerings for social network analysis are diverse (there's sna and statnet to start), robust, and open. The barebones command-line interface may turn off a lot of beginners, though.  So here's a couple of my favorites alternatives to R:

• Gephi - Java-based SNA package. The base install gives novices an easy way to visualize sociographs. Entering data is a bit awkward for those already familiar with sociomatrices, since you have to enter vertices and edges in separate worksheets. Analytical tools are sparse, but it has an R-type library you can use to install new functionality.

• UCINET - Windows-only program developed by big names in SNA - Borgatti, Everret, and Freeman. It can handle a lot of legacy sociomatrix file formats and has a lot of the  standard analytical tools built in.