Various methods have been proposed for creating a binary version of a complex
network with valued ties. Rather than the default method of choosing a single
threshold value about which to dichotomize, we consider a method of choosing
the highest k outbound arcs from each person and assigning a binary tie, as
this has the advantage of minimizing the isolation of nodes that may otherwise
be weakly connected. However, simulations and real data sets establish that
this method is worse than the default thresholding method and should not be
generally considered to deal with valued networks.