Spectral Clustering for Directed Graphs via Likelihood Estimation on Stochastic Block Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Ning, Dong, Xiaowen, Cucuringu, Mihai
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866913872544268288
author Zhang, Ning
Dong, Xiaowen
Cucuringu, Mihai
author_facet Zhang, Ning
Dong, Xiaowen
Cucuringu, Mihai
contents Graph clustering is a fundamental task in unsupervised learning with broad real-world applications. While spectral clustering methods for undirected graphs are well-established and guided by a minimum cut optimization consensus, their extension to directed graphs remains relatively underexplored due to the additional complexity introduced by edge directions. In this paper, we leverage statistical inference on stochastic block models to guide the development of a spectral clustering algorithm for directed graphs. Specifically, we study the maximum likelihood estimation under a widely used directed stochastic block model, and derive a global objective function that aligns with the underlying community structure. We further establish a theoretical upper bound on the misclustering error of its spectral relaxation, and based on this relaxation, introduce a novel, self-adaptive spectral clustering method for directed graphs. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate significant performance gains over existing baselines.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_19516
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spectral Clustering for Directed Graphs via Likelihood Estimation on Stochastic Block Models
Zhang, Ning
Dong, Xiaowen
Cucuringu, Mihai
Machine Learning
Social and Information Networks
Statistics Theory
Graph clustering is a fundamental task in unsupervised learning with broad real-world applications. While spectral clustering methods for undirected graphs are well-established and guided by a minimum cut optimization consensus, their extension to directed graphs remains relatively underexplored due to the additional complexity introduced by edge directions. In this paper, we leverage statistical inference on stochastic block models to guide the development of a spectral clustering algorithm for directed graphs. Specifically, we study the maximum likelihood estimation under a widely used directed stochastic block model, and derive a global objective function that aligns with the underlying community structure. We further establish a theoretical upper bound on the misclustering error of its spectral relaxation, and based on this relaxation, introduce a novel, self-adaptive spectral clustering method for directed graphs. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate significant performance gains over existing baselines.
title Spectral Clustering for Directed Graphs via Likelihood Estimation on Stochastic Block Models
topic Machine Learning
Social and Information Networks
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19516