68 research outputs found
Size reduction of complex networks preserving modularity
The ubiquity of modular structure in real-world complex networks is being the
focus of attention in many trials to understand the interplay between network
topology and functionality. The best approaches to the identification of
modular structure are based on the optimization of a quality function known as
modularity. However this optimization is a hard task provided that the
computational complexity of the problem is in the NP-hard class. Here we
propose an exact method for reducing the size of weighted (directed and
undirected) complex networks while maintaining invariant its modularity. This
size reduction allows the heuristic algorithms that optimize modularity for a
better exploration of the modularity landscape. We compare the modularity
obtained in several real complex-networks by using the Extremal Optimization
algorithm, before and after the size reduction, showing the improvement
obtained. We speculate that the proposed analytical size reduction could be
extended to an exact coarse graining of the network in the scope of real-space
renormalization.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure
Motif-based communities in complex networks
Community definitions usually focus on edges, inside and between the
communities. However, the high density of edges within a community determines
correlations between nodes going beyond nearest-neighbours, and which are
indicated by the presence of motifs. We show how motifs can be used to define
general classes of nodes, including communities, by extending the mathematical
expression of Newman-Girvan modularity. We construct then a general framework
and apply it to some synthetic and real networks
Community structure in directed networks
We consider the problem of finding communities or modules in directed
networks. The most common approach to this problem in the previous literature
has been simply to ignore edge direction and apply methods developed for
community discovery in undirected networks, but this approach discards
potentially useful information contained in the edge directions. Here we show
how the widely used benefit function known as modularity can be generalized in
a principled fashion to incorporate the information contained in edge
directions. This in turn allows us to find communities by maximizing the
modularity over possible divisions of a network, which we do using an algorithm
based on the eigenvectors of the corresponding modularity matrix. This method
is shown to give demonstrably better results than previous methods on a variety
of test networks, both real and computer-generated.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Detecting communities of triangles in complex networks using spectral optimization
The study of the sub-structure of complex networks is of major importance to
relate topology and functionality. Many efforts have been devoted to the
analysis of the modular structure of networks using the quality function known
as modularity. However, generally speaking, the relation between topological
modules and functional groups is still unknown, and depends on the semantic of
the links. Sometimes, we know in advance that many connections are transitive
and, as a consequence, triangles have a specific meaning. Here we propose the
study of the modular structure of networks considering triangles as the
building blocks of modules. The method generalizes the standard modularity and
uses spectral optimization to find its maximum. We compare the partitions
obtained with those resulting from the optimization of the standard modularity
in several real networks. The results show that the information reported by the
analysis of modules of triangles complements the information of the classical
modularity analysis.Comment: Computer Communications (in press
Using Triangles to Improve Community Detection in Directed Networks
In a graph, a community may be loosely defined as a group of nodes that are
more closely connected to one another than to the rest of the graph. While
there are a variety of metrics that can be used to specify the quality of a
given community, one common theme is that flows tend to stay within
communities. Hence, we expect cycles to play an important role in community
detection. For undirected graphs, the importance of triangles -- an undirected
3-cycle -- has been known for a long time and can be used to improve community
detection. In directed graphs, the situation is more nuanced. The smallest
cycle is simply two nodes with a reciprocal connection, and using information
about reciprocation has proven to improve community detection. Our new idea is
based on the four types of directed triangles that contain cycles. To identify
communities in directed networks, then, we propose an undirected edge-weighting
scheme based on the type of the directed triangles in which edges are involved.
We also propose a new metric on quality of the communities that is based on the
number of 3-cycles that are split across communities. To demonstrate the impact
of our new weighting, we use the standard METIS graph partitioning tool to
determine communities and show experimentally that the resulting communities
result in fewer 3-cycles being cut. The magnitude of the effect varies between
a 10 and 50% reduction, and we also find evidence that this weighting scheme
improves a task where plausible ground-truth communities are known.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Laplacian Dynamics and Multiscale Modular Structure in Networks
Most methods proposed to uncover communities in complex networks rely on
their structural properties. Here we introduce the stability of a network
partition, a measure of its quality defined in terms of the statistical
properties of a dynamical process taking place on the graph. The time-scale of
the process acts as an intrinsic parameter that uncovers community structures
at different resolutions. The stability extends and unifies standard notions
for community detection: modularity and spectral partitioning can be seen as
limiting cases of our dynamic measure. Similarly, recently proposed
multi-resolution methods correspond to linearisations of the stability at short
times. The connection between community detection and Laplacian dynamics
enables us to establish dynamically motivated stability measures linked to
distinct null models. We apply our method to find multi-scale partitions for
different networks and show that the stability can be computed efficiently for
large networks with extended versions of current algorithms.Comment: New discussions on the selection of the most significant scales and
the generalisation of stability to directed network
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