Community detection and reciprocity in networks by jointly modeling pairs of edges

Abstract

We present a probabilistic generative model and an efficient algorithm to both perform community detection and capture reciprocity in networks. Our approach jointly models pairs of edges with exact 2-edge joint distributions. In addition, it provides closed-form analytical expressions for both marginal and conditional distributions. We validate our model on synthetic data in recovering communities, edge prediction tasks, and generating synthetic networks that replicate the reciprocity values observed in real networks. We also highlight these findings on two real datasets that are relevant for social scientists and behavioral ecologists. Our method overcomes the limitations of both standard algorithms and recent models that incorporate reciprocity through a pseudo-likelihood approximation. We provide an open-source implementation of the code online.

Publication
Journal of Complex Networks 10, cnac034
Martina Contisciani
Martina Contisciani
PhD student

My research focuses on the analysis of network data using statistical tools. My background is in Theoretical and Applied Statistics and I am interested in discovering new techniques, approaches and perspectives used in the analysis of data. I have been working on a project focused on modeling covariate information in community detection algorithms and I am involved in investigating the conditional independence assumption, underlying the statistical inference on network data.

Hadiseh Safdari
Hadiseh Safdari
Postdoctoral researcher

My current research revolves around inference and modeling in networks. More precisely, we aim to relax the independence assumptions in generative models by deploying hidden variables, and establishing analytical approximations to make the inference problem tractable.

Caterina De Bacco
Caterina De Bacco
CyberValley Research Group Leader

My research focuses on understanding, optimizing and predicting relations between the microscopic and macroscopic properties of complex large-scale interacting systems.

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