74,051 research outputs found
Feature Extraction from Degree Distribution for Comparison and Analysis of Complex Networks
The degree distribution is an important characteristic of complex networks.
In many data analysis applications, the networks should be represented as
fixed-length feature vectors and therefore the feature extraction from the
degree distribution is a necessary step. Moreover, many applications need a
similarity function for comparison of complex networks based on their degree
distributions. Such a similarity measure has many applications including
classification and clustering of network instances, evaluation of network
sampling methods, anomaly detection, and study of epidemic dynamics. The
existing methods are unable to effectively capture the similarity of degree
distributions, particularly when the corresponding networks have different
sizes. Based on our observations about the structure of the degree
distributions in networks over time, we propose a feature extraction and a
similarity function for the degree distributions in complex networks. We
propose to calculate the feature values based on the mean and standard
deviation of the node degrees in order to decrease the effect of the network
size on the extracted features. The proposed method is evaluated using
different artificial and real network datasets, and it outperforms the state of
the art methods with respect to the accuracy of the distance function and the
effectiveness of the extracted features.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1307.362
Quantification and Comparison of Degree Distributions in Complex Networks
The degree distribution is an important characteristic of complex networks.
In many applications, quantification of degree distribution in the form of a
fixed-length feature vector is a necessary step. On the other hand, we often
need to compare the degree distribution of two given networks and extract the
amount of similarity between the two distributions. In this paper, we propose a
novel method for quantification of the degree distributions in complex
networks. Based on this quantification method,a new distance function is also
proposed for degree distributions, which captures the differences in the
overall structure of the two given distributions. The proposed method is able
to effectively compare networks even with different scales, and outperforms the
state of the art methods considerably, with respect to the accuracy of the
distance function
Element-centric clustering comparison unifies overlaps and hierarchy
Clustering is one of the most universal approaches for understanding complex
data. A pivotal aspect of clustering analysis is quantitatively comparing
clusterings; clustering comparison is the basis for many tasks such as
clustering evaluation, consensus clustering, and tracking the temporal
evolution of clusters. In particular, the extrinsic evaluation of clustering
methods requires comparing the uncovered clusterings to planted clusterings or
known metadata. Yet, as we demonstrate, existing clustering comparison measures
have critical biases which undermine their usefulness, and no measure
accommodates both overlapping and hierarchical clusterings. Here we unify the
comparison of disjoint, overlapping, and hierarchically structured clusterings
by proposing a new element-centric framework: elements are compared based on
the relationships induced by the cluster structure, as opposed to the
traditional cluster-centric philosophy. We demonstrate that, in contrast to
standard clustering similarity measures, our framework does not suffer from
critical biases and naturally provides unique insights into how the clusterings
differ. We illustrate the strengths of our framework by revealing new insights
into the organization of clusters in two applications: the improved
classification of schizophrenia based on the overlapping and hierarchical
community structure of fMRI brain networks, and the disentanglement of various
social homophily factors in Facebook social networks. The universality of
clustering suggests far-reaching impact of our framework throughout all areas
of science
Nine Quick Tips for Analyzing Network Data
These tips provide a quick and concentrated guide for beginners in the
analysis of network data
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