Exchangeable graph models (ExGM) subsume a number of popular network models.
The mathematical object that characterizes an ExGM is termed a graphon. Finding
scalable estimators of graphons, provably consistent, remains an open issue. In
this paper, we propose a histogram estimator of a graphon that is provably
consistent and numerically efficient. The proposed estimator is based on a
sorting-and-smoothing (SAS) algorithm, which first sorts the empirical degree
of a graph, then smooths the sorted graph using total variation minimization.
The consistency of the SAS algorithm is proved by leveraging sparsity concepts
from compressed sensing.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figure