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A New Methodology for Generalizing Unweighted Network Measures
Several important complex network measures that helped discovering common
patterns across real-world networks ignore edge weights, an important
information in real-world networks. We propose a new methodology for
generalizing measures of unweighted networks through a generalization of the
cardinality concept of a set of weights. The key observation here is that many
measures of unweighted networks use the cardinality (the size) of some subset
of edges in their computation. For example, the node degree is the number of
edges incident to a node. We define the effective cardinality, a new metric
that quantifies how many edges are effectively being used, assuming that an
edge's weight reflects the amount of interaction across that edge. We prove
that a generalized measure, using our method, reduces to the original
unweighted measure if there is no disparity between weights, which ensures that
the laws that govern the original unweighted measure will also govern the
generalized measure when the weights are equal. We also prove that our
generalization ensures a partial ordering (among sets of weighted edges) that
is consistent with the original unweighted measure, unlike previously developed
generalizations. We illustrate the applicability of our method by generalizing
four unweighted network measures. As a case study, we analyze four real-world
weighted networks using our generalized degree and clustering coefficient. The
analysis shows that the generalized degree distribution is consistent with the
power-law hypothesis but with steeper decline and that there is a common
pattern governing the ratio between the generalized degree and the traditional
degree. The analysis also shows that nodes with more uniform weights tend to
cluster with nodes that also have more uniform weights among themselves.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure
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