A Local Perspective on Community Structure in Multilayer Networks

TitleA Local Perspective on Community Structure in Multilayer Networks
Publication TypeMiscellaneous
Year of Publication2015
AuthorsJeub, L. G. S., Mahoney M., Mucha P. J., & Porter M. A.
Abstract

The analysis of multilayer networks is among the most active areas of network science, and there are now several methods to detect dense “communities” of nodes in multilayer networks. One way to define a community is as a set of nodes that trap a diffusion-like dynamical process (usually a random walk) for a long time. In this view, communities are sets of nodes that create bottlenecks to the spreading of a dynamical process on a network. We analyze the local behavior of different random walks on multiplex networks (which are multilayer networks in which different layers correspond to different types of edges) and show that they have very different bottlenecks that hence correspond to rather different notions of what it means for a set of nodes to be a good community. This has direct implications for the behavior of community-detection methods that are based on these random walks.
 

Acknowledgment

LGSJ acknowledges a CASE studentship award from the EPSRC (BK/10/039), and LGSJ and MAP were supported in part from the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative - Complex Systems Scholar Award grant # 220020177 and the FET-Proactive project PLEXMATH (FP7-ICT-2011-8; grant # 317614) funded by the European Commission. MAP was also supported by the EPSRC (EP/J001759/1). MWM acknowledges funding from the Army Research Office and from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. PJM was supported from the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative - Complex Systems Scholar Award grant # 220020315. MAP also thanks SAMSI for supporting several visits and MWM for his hospitality during a sabbatical at Stanford.
 

URLhttps://arxiv.org/pdf/1510.05185.pdf
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