Predicting top-L missing links with node and link clustering information in large-scale networks

Abstract

Networks are mathematical structures that are universally used to describe a large variety of complex systems, such as social, biological, and technological systems. The prediction of missing links in incomplete complex networks aims to estimate the likelihood of the existence of a link between a pair of nodes. Various topological features of networks have been applied to develop link prediction methods. However, the exploration of features of links is still limited. In this paper, we demonstrate the power of node and link clustering information in predicting top -L missing links. In the existing literature, link prediction algorithms have only been tested on small-scale and middle-scale networks. The network scale factor has not attracted the same level of attention. In our experiments, we test the proposed method on three groups of networks. For small-scale networks, since the structures are not very complex, advanced methods cannot perform significantly better than classical methods. For middle-scale networks, the proposed index, combining both node and link clustering information, starts to demonstrate its advantages. In many networks, combining both node and link clustering information can improve the link prediction accuracy a great deal. Large-scale networks with more than 100 000 links have rarely been tested previously. Our experiments on three large-scale networks show that local clustering information based methods outperform other methods, and link clustering information can further improve the accuracy of node clustering information based methods, in particular for networks with a broad distribution of the link clustering coefficient.