Alice and the Caterpillar: A more descriptive null model for assessing data mining results

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Preti, Giulia, Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci, Riondato, Matteo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912424937914368
author Preti, Giulia
Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci
Riondato, Matteo
author_facet Preti, Giulia
Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci
Riondato, Matteo
contents We introduce novel null models for assessing the results obtained from observed binary transactional and sequence datasets, using statistical hypothesis testing. Our null models maintain more properties of the observed dataset than existing ones. Specifically, they preserve the Bipartite Joint Degree Matrix of the bipartite (multi-)graph corresponding to the dataset, which ensures that the number of caterpillars, i.e., paths of length three, is preserved, in addition to other properties considered by other models. We describe Alice, a suite of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for sampling datasets from our null models, based on a carefully defined set of states and efficient operations to move between them. The results of our experimental evaluation show that Alice mixes fast and scales well, and that our null model finds different significant results than ones previously considered in the literature.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09764
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Alice and the Caterpillar: A more descriptive null model for assessing data mining results
Preti, Giulia
Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci
Riondato, Matteo
Social and Information Networks
Machine Learning
We introduce novel null models for assessing the results obtained from observed binary transactional and sequence datasets, using statistical hypothesis testing. Our null models maintain more properties of the observed dataset than existing ones. Specifically, they preserve the Bipartite Joint Degree Matrix of the bipartite (multi-)graph corresponding to the dataset, which ensures that the number of caterpillars, i.e., paths of length three, is preserved, in addition to other properties considered by other models. We describe Alice, a suite of Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms for sampling datasets from our null models, based on a carefully defined set of states and efficient operations to move between them. The results of our experimental evaluation show that Alice mixes fast and scales well, and that our null model finds different significant results than ones previously considered in the literature.
title Alice and the Caterpillar: A more descriptive null model for assessing data mining results
topic Social and Information Networks
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09764