4,865 research outputs found
Community detection and stochastic block models: recent developments
The stochastic block model (SBM) is a random graph model with planted
clusters. It is widely employed as a canonical model to study clustering and
community detection, and provides generally a fertile ground to study the
statistical and computational tradeoffs that arise in network and data
sciences.
This note surveys the recent developments that establish the fundamental
limits for community detection in the SBM, both with respect to
information-theoretic and computational thresholds, and for various recovery
requirements such as exact, partial and weak recovery (a.k.a., detection). The
main results discussed are the phase transitions for exact recovery at the
Chernoff-Hellinger threshold, the phase transition for weak recovery at the
Kesten-Stigum threshold, the optimal distortion-SNR tradeoff for partial
recovery, the learning of the SBM parameters and the gap between
information-theoretic and computational thresholds.
The note also covers some of the algorithms developed in the quest of
achieving the limits, in particular two-round algorithms via graph-splitting,
semi-definite programming, linearized belief propagation, classical and
nonbacktracking spectral methods. A few open problems are also discussed
Information-theoretic bounds and phase transitions in clustering, sparse PCA, and submatrix localization
We study the problem of detecting a structured, low-rank signal matrix
corrupted with additive Gaussian noise. This includes clustering in a Gaussian
mixture model, sparse PCA, and submatrix localization. Each of these problems
is conjectured to exhibit a sharp information-theoretic threshold, below which
the signal is too weak for any algorithm to detect. We derive upper and lower
bounds on these thresholds by applying the first and second moment methods to
the likelihood ratio between these "planted models" and null models where the
signal matrix is zero. Our bounds differ by at most a factor of root two when
the rank is large (in the clustering and submatrix localization problems, when
the number of clusters or blocks is large) or the signal matrix is very sparse.
Moreover, our upper bounds show that for each of these problems there is a
significant regime where reliable detection is information- theoretically
possible but where known algorithms such as PCA fail completely, since the
spectrum of the observed matrix is uninformative. This regime is analogous to
the conjectured 'hard but detectable' regime for community detection in sparse
graphs.Comment: For sparse PCA and submatrix localization, we determine the
information-theoretic threshold exactly in the limit where the number of
blocks is large or the signal matrix is very sparse based on a conditional
second moment method, closing the factor of root two gap in the first versio
Projected Power Iteration for Network Alignment
The network alignment problem asks for the best correspondence between two
given graphs, so that the largest possible number of edges are matched. This
problem appears in many scientific problems (like the study of protein-protein
interactions) and it is very closely related to the quadratic assignment
problem which has graph isomorphism, traveling salesman and minimum bisection
problems as particular cases. The graph matching problem is NP-hard in general.
However, under some restrictive models for the graphs, algorithms can
approximate the alignment efficiently. In that spirit the recent work by Feizi
and collaborators introduce EigenAlign, a fast spectral method with convergence
guarantees for Erd\H{o}s-Reny\'i graphs. In this work we propose the algorithm
Projected Power Alignment, which is a projected power iteration version of
EigenAlign. We numerically show it improves the recovery rates of EigenAlign
and we describe the theory that may be used to provide performance guarantees
for Projected Power Alignment.Comment: 8 page
A semidefinite program for unbalanced multisection in the stochastic block model
We propose a semidefinite programming (SDP) algorithm for community detection
in the stochastic block model, a popular model for networks with latent
community structure. We prove that our algorithm achieves exact recovery of the
latent communities, up to the information-theoretic limits determined by Abbe
and Sandon (2015). Our result extends prior SDP approaches by allowing for many
communities of different sizes. By virtue of a semidefinite approach, our
algorithms succeed against a semirandom variant of the stochastic block model,
guaranteeing a form of robustness and generalization. We further explore how
semirandom models can lend insight into both the strengths and limitations of
SDPs in this setting.Comment: 29 page
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