Stochastic block models with many communities and the Kesten--Stigum bound
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912423756169216 |
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| author | Chin, Byron Mossel, Elchanan Sohn, Youngtak Wein, Alexander S. |
| author_facet | Chin, Byron Mossel, Elchanan Sohn, Youngtak Wein, Alexander S. |
| contents | We study the inference of communities in stochastic block models with a growing number of communities. For block models with $n$ vertices and a fixed number of communities $q$, it was predicted in Decelle et al. (2011) that there are computationally efficient algorithms for recovering the communities above the Kesten--Stigum (KS) bound and that efficient recovery is impossible below the KS bound. This conjecture has since stimulated a lot of interest, with the achievability side proven in a line of research that culminated in the work of Abbe and Sandon (2018). Conversely, recent work by Sohn and Wein (2025) provides evidence for the hardness part using the low-degree paradigm.
In this paper we investigate community recovery in the regime $q=q_n \to \infty$ as $n\to\infty$ where no such predictions exist. We show that efficient inference of communities remains possible above the KS bound. Furthermore, we show that recovery of block models is low-degree hard below the KS bound when the number of communities satisfies $q\ll \sqrt{n}$. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that when $q \gg \sqrt{n}$, there is an efficient algorithm based on non-backtracking walks for recovery even below the KS bound. We identify a new threshold and ask if it is the threshold for efficient recovery in this regime. Finally, we show that detection is easy and identify (up to a constant) the information-theoretic threshold for community recovery as the number of communities $q$ diverges.
Our low-degree hardness results also naturally have consequences for graphon estimation, improving results of Luo and Gao (2024). |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_03047 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Stochastic block models with many communities and the Kesten--Stigum bound Chin, Byron Mossel, Elchanan Sohn, Youngtak Wein, Alexander S. Probability Social and Information Networks Statistics Theory We study the inference of communities in stochastic block models with a growing number of communities. For block models with $n$ vertices and a fixed number of communities $q$, it was predicted in Decelle et al. (2011) that there are computationally efficient algorithms for recovering the communities above the Kesten--Stigum (KS) bound and that efficient recovery is impossible below the KS bound. This conjecture has since stimulated a lot of interest, with the achievability side proven in a line of research that culminated in the work of Abbe and Sandon (2018). Conversely, recent work by Sohn and Wein (2025) provides evidence for the hardness part using the low-degree paradigm. In this paper we investigate community recovery in the regime $q=q_n \to \infty$ as $n\to\infty$ where no such predictions exist. We show that efficient inference of communities remains possible above the KS bound. Furthermore, we show that recovery of block models is low-degree hard below the KS bound when the number of communities satisfies $q\ll \sqrt{n}$. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that when $q \gg \sqrt{n}$, there is an efficient algorithm based on non-backtracking walks for recovery even below the KS bound. We identify a new threshold and ask if it is the threshold for efficient recovery in this regime. Finally, we show that detection is easy and identify (up to a constant) the information-theoretic threshold for community recovery as the number of communities $q$ diverges. Our low-degree hardness results also naturally have consequences for graphon estimation, improving results of Luo and Gao (2024). |
| title | Stochastic block models with many communities and the Kesten--Stigum bound |
| topic | Probability Social and Information Networks Statistics Theory |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03047 |