ABSTRACT
Robert K. Merton, the theorist, has always known a good deal more about statistics than most sociologists. The first, the matrix representation of sociograms, is of interest because its use clarifies and operationalizes concepts that Merton was able to handle less incisively with his verbal theory. Social psychologists have been bothered by the chaos that the circles and lines of a sociogram may assume when there are more than a few individuals in the group. The orderly arrangement of the sociomatrix makes it easier to see the pattern of relations at a glance. The formalization presented in this chapter applies to any sociometric relation, it will be most useful to consider it as a hypothetical example of an "influence structure". What the matrix formalizations have accomplished is to suggest that the structure of influence has more layers to it than Merton had assumed. Formal models, even when based entirely on hypothetical data, may thus have significant implications for substantive theory.
