We study the notion of approximate entropy within the framework of network
theory. Approximate entropy is an uncertainty measure originally proposed in
the context of dynamical systems and time series. We firstly define a purely
structural entropy obtained by computing the approximate entropy of the so
called slide sequence. This is a surrogate of the degree sequence and it is
suggested by the frequency partition of a graph. We examine this quantity for
standard scale-free and Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi networks. By using classical results
of Pincus, we show that our entropy measure converges with network size to a
certain binary Shannon entropy. On a second step, with specific attention to
networks generated by dynamical processes, we investigate approximate entropy
of horizontal visibility graphs. Visibility graphs permit to naturally
associate to a network the notion of temporal correlations, therefore providing
the measure a dynamical garment. We show that approximate entropy distinguishes
visibility graphs generated by processes with different complexity. The result
probes to a greater extent these networks for the study of dynamical systems.
Applications to certain biological data arising in cancer genomics are finally
considered in the light of both approaches.Comment: 11 pages, 5 EPS figure
