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Autore principale: Loyal, Joshua Daniel
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09715
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author Loyal, Joshua Daniel
author_facet Loyal, Joshua Daniel
contents Latent space models (LSMs) are often used to analyze dynamic (time-varying) networks that evolve in continuous time. Existing approaches to Bayesian inference for these models rely on Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, which cannot handle modern large-scale networks. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a new prior for continuous-time LSMs based on Bayesian P-splines that allows the posterior to adapt to the dimension of the latent space and the temporal variation in each latent position. We propose a stochastic variational inference algorithm to estimate the model parameters. We use stochastic optimization to subsample both dyads and observed time points to design a fast algorithm that is linear in the number of edges in the dynamic network. Furthermore, we establish non-asymptotic error bounds for point estimates derived from the variational posterior. To our knowledge, this is the first such result for Bayesian estimators of continuous-time LSMs. Lastly, we use the method to analyze a large data set of international conflicts consisting of 4,456,095 relations from 2018 to 2022.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_09715
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fast Variational Inference of Latent Space Models for Dynamic Networks Using Bayesian P-Splines
Loyal, Joshua Daniel
Methodology
Computation
Latent space models (LSMs) are often used to analyze dynamic (time-varying) networks that evolve in continuous time. Existing approaches to Bayesian inference for these models rely on Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, which cannot handle modern large-scale networks. To overcome this limitation, we introduce a new prior for continuous-time LSMs based on Bayesian P-splines that allows the posterior to adapt to the dimension of the latent space and the temporal variation in each latent position. We propose a stochastic variational inference algorithm to estimate the model parameters. We use stochastic optimization to subsample both dyads and observed time points to design a fast algorithm that is linear in the number of edges in the dynamic network. Furthermore, we establish non-asymptotic error bounds for point estimates derived from the variational posterior. To our knowledge, this is the first such result for Bayesian estimators of continuous-time LSMs. Lastly, we use the method to analyze a large data set of international conflicts consisting of 4,456,095 relations from 2018 to 2022.
title Fast Variational Inference of Latent Space Models for Dynamic Networks Using Bayesian P-Splines
topic Methodology
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09715