Understanding Heterophily for Graph Neural Networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Wang, Junfu, Guo, Yuanfang, Yang, Liang, Wang, Yunhong
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Wang, Junfu
Guo, Yuanfang
Yang, Liang
Wang, Yunhong
author_facet Wang, Junfu
Guo, Yuanfang
Yang, Liang
Wang, Yunhong
contents Graphs with heterophily have been regarded as challenging scenarios for Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), where nodes are connected with dissimilar neighbors through various patterns. In this paper, we present theoretical understandings of the impacts of different heterophily patterns for GNNs by incorporating the graph convolution (GC) operations into fully connected networks via the proposed Heterophilous Stochastic Block Models (HSBM), a general random graph model that can accommodate diverse heterophily patterns. Firstly, we show that by applying a GC operation, the separability gains are determined by two factors, i.e., the Euclidean distance of the neighborhood distributions and $\sqrt{\mathbb{E}\left[\operatorname{deg}\right]}$, where $\mathbb{E}\left[\operatorname{deg}\right]$ is the averaged node degree. It reveals that the impact of heterophily on classification needs to be evaluated alongside the averaged node degree. Secondly, we show that the topological noise has a detrimental impact on separability, which is equivalent to degrading $\mathbb{E}\left[\operatorname{deg}\right]$. Finally, when applying multiple GC operations, we show that the separability gains are determined by the normalized distance of the $l$-powered neighborhood distributions. It indicates that the nodes still possess separability as $l$ goes to infinity in a wide range of regimes. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world data verify the effectiveness of our theory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_09125
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Understanding Heterophily for Graph Neural Networks
Wang, Junfu
Guo, Yuanfang
Yang, Liang
Wang, Yunhong
Machine Learning
Graphs with heterophily have been regarded as challenging scenarios for Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), where nodes are connected with dissimilar neighbors through various patterns. In this paper, we present theoretical understandings of the impacts of different heterophily patterns for GNNs by incorporating the graph convolution (GC) operations into fully connected networks via the proposed Heterophilous Stochastic Block Models (HSBM), a general random graph model that can accommodate diverse heterophily patterns. Firstly, we show that by applying a GC operation, the separability gains are determined by two factors, i.e., the Euclidean distance of the neighborhood distributions and $\sqrt{\mathbb{E}\left[\operatorname{deg}\right]}$, where $\mathbb{E}\left[\operatorname{deg}\right]$ is the averaged node degree. It reveals that the impact of heterophily on classification needs to be evaluated alongside the averaged node degree. Secondly, we show that the topological noise has a detrimental impact on separability, which is equivalent to degrading $\mathbb{E}\left[\operatorname{deg}\right]$. Finally, when applying multiple GC operations, we show that the separability gains are determined by the normalized distance of the $l$-powered neighborhood distributions. It indicates that the nodes still possess separability as $l$ goes to infinity in a wide range of regimes. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world data verify the effectiveness of our theory.
title Understanding Heterophily for Graph Neural Networks
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09125