Motif-based tests for bipartite networks

DOI10.1214/21-EJS1944zbMATH Open1498.62116arXiv2101.11381OpenAlexW4206518699MaRDI QIDQ2136609FDOQ2136609

Pierre Latouche, Sarah Ouadah, Stéphane Robin

Publication date: 11 May 2022

Published in: Electronic Journal of Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Bipartite networks are a natural representation of the interactions between entities from two different types. The organization (or topology) of such networks gives insight to understand the systems they describe as a whole. Here, we rely on motifs which provide a meso-scale description of the topology. Moreover, we consider the bipartite expected degree distribution (B-EDD) model which accounts for both the density of the network and possible imbalances between the degrees of the nodes. Under the B-EDD model, we prove the asymptotic normality of the count of any given motif, considering sparsity conditions. We also provide close-form expressions for the mean and the variance of this count. This allows to avoid computationally prohibitive resampling procedures. Based on these results, we define a goodness-of-fit test for the B-EDD model and propose a family of tests for network comparisons. We assess the asymptotic normality of the test statistics and the power of the proposed tests on synthetic experiments and illustrate their use on ecological data sets.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.11381

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zbMATH Keywords

goodness-of-fitbipartite networksnetwork motifsnetwork comparisonexpected degree distribution

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Asymptotic distribution theory in statistics (62E20) Hypothesis testing in multivariate analysis (62H15) Probabilistic graphical models (62H22) Applications of statistics to environmental and related topics (62P12) Random graphs (graph-theoretic aspects) (05C80) Exchangeability for stochastic processes (60G09)

Cites Work

• Limits of dense graph sequences
• Block clustering with Bernoulli mixture models: comparison of different approaches
• The Structure and Function of Complex Networks
• Asymptotic Statistics
• Graph limits and exchangeable random graphs
• Connected components in random graphs with given expected degree sequences
• Compound Poisson approximations of subgraph counts in random graphs
• Subgraph counts in random graphs using incomplete U-statistics methods

Cited In (2)

• A scale-free graph model based on bipartite graphs
• An analytical approach to network motif detection in samples of networks with pairwise different vertex labels

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