Degree-corrected Block Models Research Articles

Adjusted chi-square test for degree-corrected block models

Adjusted chi-square test for degree-corrected block models

Community detection in degree-corrected block models

Community detection is a central problem of network data analysis. Given a network, the goal of community detection is to partition the network nodes into a small number of clusters, which could often help reveal interesting structures. The present paper studies community detection in Degree-Corrected Block Models (DCBMs). We first derive asymptotic minimax risks of the problem for a misclassification proportion loss under appropriate conditions. The minimax risks are shown to depend on degree-correction parameters, community sizes, and average within and between community connectivities in an intuitive and interpretable way. In addition, we propose a polynomial time algorithm to adaptively perform consistent and even asymptotically optimal community detection in DCBMs.

Dynamic degree-corrected blockmodels for social networks: A nonparametric approach

A nonparametric approach to the modelling of social networks using degree-corrected stochastic blockmodels is proposed. The model for static network consists of a stochastic blockmodel using a probit regression formulation, and popularity parameters are incorporated to account for degree heterogeneity. We specify a Dirichlet process prior to detect community structure as well as to induce clustering in the popularity parameters. This approach is flexible yet parsimonious as it allows the appropriate number of communities and popularity clusters to be determined automatically by the data. We further discuss and implement extensions of the static model to dynamic networks. In a Bayesian framework, we perform posterior inference through MCMC algorithms. The models are illustrated using several real-world benchmark social networks.

Generic Sample Splitting for Refined Community Recovery in Degree Corrected Stochastic Block Models

We propose and analyze a generic method for community recovery in stochastic block models and degree corrected block models. This approach can exactly recover the hidden communities with high probability when the expected node degrees are of order $\log n$ or higher. Starting from a roughly correct community partition given by some conventional community recovery algorithm, this method refines the partition in a cross clustering step. Our results simplify and extend some of the previous work on exact community recovery, discovering the key role played by sample splitting. The proposed method is simple and can be implemented with many practical community recovery algorithms.

Co-clustering of nonsmooth graphons

Performance bounds are given for exploratory co-clustering/blockmodeling of bipartite graph data, where we assume the rows and columns of the data matrix are samples from an arbitrary population. This is equivalent to assuming that the data is generated from a nonsmooth graphon. It is shown that co-clusters found by any method can be extended to the row and column populations, or equivalently that the estimated blockmodel approximates a blocked version of the generative graphon, with estimation error bounded by $O_{P}(n^{-1/2})$. Analogous performance bounds are also given for degree-corrected blockmodels and random dot product graphs, with error rates depending on the dimensionality of the latent variable space.

Model selection for degree-corrected block models

The proliferation of models for networks raises challenging problems of model selection: the data are sparse and globally dependent, and models are typically high-dimensional and have large numbers of latent variables. Together, these issues mean that the usual model-selection criteria do not work properly for networks. We illustrate these challenges, and show one way to resolve them, by considering the key network-analysis problem of dividing a graph into communities or blocks of nodes with homogeneous patterns of links to the rest of the network. The standard tool for undertaking this is the stochastic block model, under which the probability of a link between two nodes is a function solely of the blocks to which they belong. This imposes a homogeneous degree distribution within each block; this can be unrealistic, so degree-corrected block models add a parameter for each node, modulating its overall degree. The choice between ordinary and degree-corrected block models matters because they make very different inferences about communities. We present the first principled and tractable approach to model selection between standard and degree-corrected block models, based on new large-graph asymptotics for the distribution of log-likelihood ratios under the stochastic block model, finding substantial departures from classical results for sparse graphs. We also develop linear-time approximations for log-likelihoods under both the stochastic block model and the degree-corrected model, using belief propagation. Applications to simulated and real networks show excellent agreement with our approximations. Our results thus both solve the practical problem of deciding on degree correction and point to a general approach to model selection in network analysis.

Oriented and degree-generated block models: generating and inferring communities with inhomogeneous degree distributions

The stochastic block model is a powerful tool for inferring community structure from network topology. However, it predicts a Poisson degree distribution within each community, while most real-world networks have a heavy-tailed degree distribution. The degree-corrected (DC) block model can accommodate arbitrary degree distributions within communities. But since it takes the vertex degrees as parameters rather than generating them, it cannot use them to help it classify the vertices, and its natural generalization to directed graphs cannot even use the orientations of the edges. In this paper, we present variants of the block model with the best of both worlds: they can use vertex degrees and edge orientations in the classification process, while tolerating heavy-tailed degree distributions within communities. We show that for some networks, including synthetic networks and networks of word adjacencies in English text, these new block models achieve a higher accuracy than either standard or DC block models.