Descriptive vs. Inferential Community Detection in Networks (Elements in the Structure and Dynamics of Complex Networks)

Peixoto, Tiago P.

ISBN 10: 1009113003 / ISBN 13: 9781009113007

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2023

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 1009113003-11-36574526

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Descriptive vs. Inferential Community Detection in Networks (Elements in the Structure and Dynamics of Complex Networks)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009113003
• ISBN 13: 9781009113007
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Community detection is one of the most important methodological fields of network science, and one which has attracted a significant amount of attention over the past decades. This area deals with the automated division of a network into fundamental building blocks, with the objective of providing a summary of its large-scale structure. Despite its importance and widespread adoption, there is a noticeable gap between what is arguably the state-of-the-art and the methods which are actually used in practice in a variety of fields. The Elements attempts to address this discrepancy by dividing existing methods according to whether they have a 'descriptive' or an 'inferential' goal. While descriptive methods find patterns in networks based on context-dependent notions of community structure, inferential methods articulate a precise generative model, and attempt to fit it to data. In this way, they are able to provide insights into formation mechanisms and separate structure from noise. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.