An improved game-theoretic approach to uncover overlapping communities

Sun, Hong-Liang; Ch'ng, Eugene; Yong, Xi; Garibaldi, Jonathan M.; See, Simon; Chen, Duan-Bing

Abstract

How can we uncover overlapping communities from complex networks to understand the inherent structures and functions? Chen et al. firstly proposed a community game (Game) to study this problem, and the overlapping communities have been discovered when the game is convergent. It is based on the assumption that each vertex of the underlying network is a rational game player to maximize its utility. In this paper, we investigate how similar vertices affect the formation of community game. The Adamic–Adar Index (AA Index) has been employed to define the new utility function. This novel method has been evaluated on both synthetic and real-world networks. Experimental study shows that it has significant improvement of accuracy (from 4.8% to 37.6%) compared with the Game on 10 real networks. It is more efficient on Facebook networks (FN) and Amazon co-purchasing networks than on other networks. This result implicates that “friend circles of friends” of Facebook are valuable to understand the overlapping community division.

Citation

Sun, H.-L., Ch'ng, E., Yong, X., Garibaldi, J. M., See, S., & Chen, D.-B. (2017). An improved game-theoretic approach to uncover overlapping communities. International Journal of Modern Physics C, 28(8), Article 1750112. https://doi.org/10.1142/S0129183117501121

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 21, 2017
• Publication Date: Sep 7, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 8, 2018
• Journal: International Journal of Modern Physics C
• Print ISSN: 0129-1831
• Electronic ISSN: 1793-6586
• Publisher: World Scientific
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 28
• Issue: 8
• Article Number: 1750112
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0129183117501121
• Keywords: Overlapping community detection; game theory; complex networks
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/881267
• Publisher URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0129183117501121
• Additional Information: Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics C, Volume 28, Issue 8, 2017, pp.1-17 doi:10.1142/S0129183117501121 © World Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0129183117501121
• Contract Date: Oct 3, 2017