Social network analysis (SNA) is increasingly a method of analysis for many fields. Epidemiology is fascinating, but before deciding to jump into a new field, t

Social network analysis (SNA) is increasingly a method of analysis for many fields. Epidemiology is fascinating, but before deciding to jump into a new field, think about how it may apply to your own sphere of interests. Since you said you're a programmer, my advice would be to find or collect some data you are interested in, and play with Python's networkx.[1] For some starter data, check out Stanfords Large Network Dataset Collection.[2] [1] http://networkx.lanl.gov/ http://networkx.lanl.gov/ [2] http://snap.stanford.edu/data/ http://snap.stanford.edu/data/ (Why were people down-voting this? It looked like a sincere question.)