Is there a way to generate graphs without vizualization for simulation purposes?

Question

I'm doing a lot of simulation runs of graphs in order to compare the simulated data with the data of a real world network (links among websites), according to my calculations I have to run close to a 1000 simulations in order to get enough significance.

The simulations code is something on the line of:

<<IGraphM`
simrun1=Table[IGBarabasiAlbertGame[1032, 2], 1000];
simrun2=TableIGStaticPowerLawGame [1032,144, 2.889], 1000];

But it can be closelly approximated by:

simrun=Table[RandomGraph[BarabasiAlbertGraphDistribution[1032, 2]], 1000]

If I suppress the output using ; in the end of the lines. The problem is that I need this data to continue to be stored in the notebook after I close the nb file, so using suppressed output isn't working well for me. I really need a way for the output to persist after I close the notebook.

The only way I could find to do it, was to evaluate the code without the suppressed output and to manually transform the output into an input cell, but the only way I found to do it was to take out the ; at the end of the lines.

But this creates another problem, since it will render 2000 graphs. Using AbsoluteTimming each line spends about 0,2s on total computation time, but the the rendering and formatting of the notebook afterwards ranges from 5 to 30 minutes. It is an awful a lot of time, and in the end I have little or no use to this visualization.

I just need the graph objects in order to map functions that take measures on them, like local, global and mean clustering coefficient, mean distance, vertex degree, number of edges, centrality measures for each node, and so on. So is there a way to generate these graphs and store on a way that would persist after closing the notebook without having to render the output without wasting so much time with rendering?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Answer 1

So is there a way to generate these graphs and store on a way that would persist after closing the notebook without having to render the output without wasting so much time with rendering?

This question isn't really about graphs. It could be about any other kind of data. The answer is that if you are going to need the data in a later session, then you should export it to a file.

myGraphs = Table[..., {1000}];

Export["graphs.mx", myGraphs]

This will write the result into graphs.mx, and you can later re-import it using

myGraphs = Import["graphs.mx"];

The MX format has limited compatibility. It cannot be read in earlier versions or on different platforms (32 vs 64 bit).

When compatibility is a concern, I usually Compress the data and export it as "String": https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/a/1960/12

---

Generally, I recommend exporting to a separate file. If you are in a hurry or for some reason it is really much better to store everything in the notebook, you can use the method I blogged about here:

• http://szhorvat.net/pelican/save-data-in-notebooks.html

^{(Earlier version also shown here.)}

I do not recommend this for data larger than a few megabytes.