Finding one community in a sparse graph

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Publication:892403

DOI10.1007/S10955-015-1338-2zbMATH Open1327.82091arXiv1502.05680OpenAlexW1692749124MaRDI QIDQ892403FDOQ892403


Authors: Andrea Montanari Edit this on Wikidata


Publication date: 19 November 2015

Published in: Journal of Statistical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We consider a random sparse graph with bounded average degree, in which a subset of vertices has higher connectivity than the background. In particular, the average degree inside this subset of vertices is larger than outside (but still bounded). Given a realization of such graph, we aim at identifying the hidden subset of vertices. This can be regarded as a model for the problem of finding a tightly knitted community in a social network, or a cluster in a relational dataset. In this paper we present two sets of contributions: (i) We use the cavity method from spin glass theory to derive an exact phase diagram for the reconstruction problem. In particular, as the difference in edge probability increases, the problem undergoes two phase transitions, a static phase transition and a dynamic one. (ii) We establish rigorous bounds on the dynamic phase transition and prove that, above a certain threshold, a local algorithm (belief propagation) correctly identify most of the hidden set. Below the same threshold emph{no local algorithm} can achieve this goal. However, in this regime the subset can be identified by exhaustive search. For small hidden sets and large average degree, the phase transition for local algorithms takes an intriguingly simple form. Local algorithms succeed with high probability for mdegminmdegmout>sqrtmdegmout/e and fail for mdegminmdegmout<sqrtmdegmout/e (with mdegmin, mdegmout the average degrees inside and outside the community). We argue that spectral algorithms are also ineffective in the latter regime. It is an open problem whether any polynomial time algorithms might succeed for mdegminmdegmout<sqrtmdegmout/e.


Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05680




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