How many asymmetric communities are there in multi-layer directed networks?

Fuente: arXiv
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Autore principale: Qing, Huan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Qing, Huan
author_facet Qing, Huan
contents Estimating the asymmetric numbers of communities in multi-layer directed networks is a challenging problem due to the multi-layer structures and inherent directional asymmetry, leading to possibly different numbers of sender and receiver communities. This work addresses this issue under the multi-layer stochastic co-block model, a model for multi-layer directed networks with distinct community structures in sending and receiving sides, by proposing a novel goodness-of-fit test. The test statistic relies on the deviation of the largest singular value of an aggregated normalized residual matrix from the constant 2. The test statistic exhibits a sharp dichotomy: Under the null hypothesis of correct model specification, its upper bound converges to zero with high probability; under underfitting, the test statistic itself diverges to infinity. With this property, we develop a sequential testing procedure that searches through candidate pairs of sender and receiver community numbers in a lexicographic order. The process stops at the smallest such pair where the test statistic drops below a decaying threshold. For robustness, we also propose a ratio-based variant algorithm, which detects sharp changes in the sequence of test statistics by comparing consecutive candidates. Both methods are proven to consistently determine the true numbers of sender and receiver communities under the multi-layer stochastic co-block model.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_21569
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How many asymmetric communities are there in multi-layer directed networks?
Qing, Huan
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
Methodology
Estimating the asymmetric numbers of communities in multi-layer directed networks is a challenging problem due to the multi-layer structures and inherent directional asymmetry, leading to possibly different numbers of sender and receiver communities. This work addresses this issue under the multi-layer stochastic co-block model, a model for multi-layer directed networks with distinct community structures in sending and receiving sides, by proposing a novel goodness-of-fit test. The test statistic relies on the deviation of the largest singular value of an aggregated normalized residual matrix from the constant 2. The test statistic exhibits a sharp dichotomy: Under the null hypothesis of correct model specification, its upper bound converges to zero with high probability; under underfitting, the test statistic itself diverges to infinity. With this property, we develop a sequential testing procedure that searches through candidate pairs of sender and receiver community numbers in a lexicographic order. The process stops at the smallest such pair where the test statistic drops below a decaying threshold. For robustness, we also propose a ratio-based variant algorithm, which detects sharp changes in the sequence of test statistics by comparing consecutive candidates. Both methods are proven to consistently determine the true numbers of sender and receiver communities under the multi-layer stochastic co-block model.
title How many asymmetric communities are there in multi-layer directed networks?
topic Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21569