Simultaneous estimation of connectivity and dimensionality in samples of networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Jiang, Wenlong, McKennan, Chris, Arroyo, Jesús, Cape, Joshua
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Jiang, Wenlong
McKennan, Chris
Arroyo, Jesús
Cape, Joshua
author_facet Jiang, Wenlong
McKennan, Chris
Arroyo, Jesús
Cape, Joshua
contents An overarching objective in contemporary statistical network analysis is extracting salient information from datasets consisting of multiple networks. To date, considerable attention has been devoted to node and network clustering, while comparatively less attention has been devoted to downstream connectivity estimation and parsimonious embedding dimension selection. Given a sample of potentially heterogeneous networks, this paper proposes a method to simultaneously estimate a latent matrix of connectivity probabilities and its embedding dimensionality or rank after first pre-estimating the number of communities and the node community memberships. The method is formulated as a convex optimization problem and solved using an alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm. We establish estimation error bounds under the Frobenius norm and nuclear norm for settings in which observable networks have blockmodel structure, even when node memberships are imperfectly recovered. When perfect membership recovery is possible and dimensionality is much smaller than the number of communities, the proposed method outperforms conventional averaging-based methods for estimating connectivity and dimensionality. Numerical studies empirically demonstrate the accuracy of our method across various scenarios. Additionally, analysis of a primate brain dataset demonstrates that posited connectivity is not necessarily full rank in practice, illustrating the need for flexible methodology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_12483
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Simultaneous estimation of connectivity and dimensionality in samples of networks
Jiang, Wenlong
McKennan, Chris
Arroyo, Jesús
Cape, Joshua
Methodology
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
62H12
An overarching objective in contemporary statistical network analysis is extracting salient information from datasets consisting of multiple networks. To date, considerable attention has been devoted to node and network clustering, while comparatively less attention has been devoted to downstream connectivity estimation and parsimonious embedding dimension selection. Given a sample of potentially heterogeneous networks, this paper proposes a method to simultaneously estimate a latent matrix of connectivity probabilities and its embedding dimensionality or rank after first pre-estimating the number of communities and the node community memberships. The method is formulated as a convex optimization problem and solved using an alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm. We establish estimation error bounds under the Frobenius norm and nuclear norm for settings in which observable networks have blockmodel structure, even when node memberships are imperfectly recovered. When perfect membership recovery is possible and dimensionality is much smaller than the number of communities, the proposed method outperforms conventional averaging-based methods for estimating connectivity and dimensionality. Numerical studies empirically demonstrate the accuracy of our method across various scenarios. Additionally, analysis of a primate brain dataset demonstrates that posited connectivity is not necessarily full rank in practice, illustrating the need for flexible methodology.
title Simultaneous estimation of connectivity and dimensionality in samples of networks
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
62H12
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12483