Exploring Network Structure with the Density of States

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Arthur, Rudy
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Arthur, Rudy
author_facet Arthur, Rudy
contents Community detection, as well as the identification of other structures like core periphery and disassortative patterns, is an important topic in network analysis. While most methods seek to find the best partition of the network according to some criteria, there is a body of results that suggest that a single network can have many good but distinct partitions. In this paper we introduce the density of states as a tool for studying the space of all possible network partitions. We demonstrate how to use the well known Wang-Landau method to compute a network's density of states. We show that, even using modularity to measure quality, the density of states can still rule out spurious structure in random networks and overcome resolution limits. We demonstrate how these methods can be used to find `building blocks', groups of nodes which are consistently found together in detected communities. This suggests an approach to partitioning based on exploration of the network's structure landscape rather than optimisation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_18253
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploring Network Structure with the Density of States
Arthur, Rudy
Social and Information Networks
Physics and Society
Community detection, as well as the identification of other structures like core periphery and disassortative patterns, is an important topic in network analysis. While most methods seek to find the best partition of the network according to some criteria, there is a body of results that suggest that a single network can have many good but distinct partitions. In this paper we introduce the density of states as a tool for studying the space of all possible network partitions. We demonstrate how to use the well known Wang-Landau method to compute a network's density of states. We show that, even using modularity to measure quality, the density of states can still rule out spurious structure in random networks and overcome resolution limits. We demonstrate how these methods can be used to find `building blocks', groups of nodes which are consistently found together in detected communities. This suggests an approach to partitioning based on exploration of the network's structure landscape rather than optimisation.
title Exploring Network Structure with the Density of States
topic Social and Information Networks
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.18253