Network graphs are great ways to explore relationships. Unsure?  Just ask Facebook, they’re betting big on Graph Search. While network graphs are useful tools, there may be obstacles for people who feel they don’t have the tech skills necessary to create them. Don’t worry, you don’t need to understand RDF or install Protégé. All you need is Excel or Google Docs, a modern browser, and an Internet connection.

First, you need to think about your data and the relationships you wish to map. For the St. Louis Freedom Suits project we mapped the relationships between people and the court cases in which they played a role. Granted, this doesn’t use Google Fusion Tables, but we created a network graph all the same. Relationships like who defended whom, who is married to whom, and as unsettling as it is, who owned whom are mapped. Patterns emerge.

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