Overlapping Community Detection Based on Membership Degree Propagation

A community in a complex network refers to a group of nodes that are densely connected internally but with only sparse connections to the outside. Overlapping community structures are ubiquitous in real-world networks, where each node belongs to at least one community. Therefore, overlapping community detection is an important topic in complex network research. This paper proposes an overlapping community detection algorithm based on membership degree propagation that is driven by both global and local information of the node community. In the method, we introduce a concept of membership degree, which not only stores the label information, but also the degrees of the node belonging to the labels. Then the conventional label propagation process could be extended to membership degree propagation, with the results mapped directly to the overlapping community division. Therefore, it obtains the partition result and overlapping node identification simultaneously and greatly reduces the computational time. The proposed algorithm was applied to a synthetic Lancichinetti–Fortunato–Radicchi (LFR) dataset and nine real-world datasets and compared with other up-to-date algorithms. The experimental results show that our proposed algorithm is effective and outperforms the comparison methods on most datasets. Our proposed method significantly improved the accuracy and speed of the overlapping node prediction. It can also substantially alleviate the computational complexity of community structure detection in general.     

Maximize personal gain in the minority game

In standard minority game, each agent at every time step chooses the highest-score strategy from his limited number of strategies given arbitrarily in the beginning of the game. Suppose one agent is free to choose any strategy at every time step, how can he manage to maximize his personal gain? Based on the behavior of the standard game, we found a strategy for the agent to score more than the others do for most of the cases.     

Boolean game on scale-free networks

Inspired by the local minority game, we propose a network Boolean game and investigate its dynamical properties on scale-free networks. The system can self-organize to a stable state with better performance than the random choice game, although only the local information is available to each agent. By introducing the heterogeneity of local interactions, we find that the system will achieve the best performance when each agent's interaction frequency is linearly correlated with its information capacity. Generally, the agents with more information gain more than those with less information, while in the optimal case, each agent almost has the same average profit. In addition, we investigate the role of irrational factor and find an interesting symmetrical behavior.     

Detecting community structure using label propagation with weighted coherent neighborhood propinquity

Community detection has become an important methodology to understand the organization and function of various real-world networks. The label propagation algorithm (LPA) is an almost linear time algorithm proved to be effective in finding a good community structure. However, LPA has a limitation caused by its one-hop horizon. Specifically, each node in LPA adopts the label shared by most of its one-hop neighbors; much network topology information is lost in this process, which we believe is one of the main reasons for its instability and poor performance. Therefore in this paper we introduce a measure named weighted coherent neighborhood propinquity (weighted-CNP) to represent the probability that a pair of vertices are involved in the same community. In label update, a node adopts the label that has the maximum weighted-CNP instead of the one that is shared by most of its neighbors. We propose a dynamic and adaptive weighted-CNP called entropic-CNP by using the principal of entropy to modulate the weights. Furthermore, we propose a framework to integrate the weighted-CNP in other algorithms in detecting community structure. We test our algorithm on both computer-generated networks and real-world networks. The experimental results show that our algorithm is more robust and effective than LPA in large-scale networks.     

Detecting overlapping communities in networks via dominant label propagation

Community detection is an important methodology for understanding the intrinsic structure and function of a realworld network.In this paper,we propose an effective and efficient algorithm,called Dominant Label Propagation Algorithm(Abbreviated as DLPA),to detect communities in complex networks.The algorithm simulates a special voting process to detect overlapping and non-overlapping community structure in complex networks simultaneously.Our algorithm is very efficient,since its computational complexity is almost linear to the number of edges in the network.Experimental results on both real-world and synthetic networks show that our algorithm also possesses high accuracies on detecting community structure in networks.     

Fuzzy overlapping community detection based on local random walk and multidimensional scaling

A fuzzy overlapping community is an important kind of overlapping community in which each node belongs to each community to different extents. It exists in many real networks but how to identify a fuzzy overlapping community is still a challenging task. In this work, the concept of local random walk and a new distance metric are introduced. Based on the new distance measurement, the dissimilarity index between each node of a network is calculated firstly. Then in order to keep the original node distance as much as possible, the network structure is mapped into low-dimensional space by the multidimensional scaling (MDS). Finally, the fuzzy c$c$-means clustering is employed to find fuzzy communities in a network. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is effective and efficient to identify the fuzzy overlapping communities in both artificial networks and real-world networks.     

Mesoscopic approach to minority games in herd regime

We study minority games in efficient regime. By incorporating the utility function and aggregating agents with similar strategies we develop an effective mesoscale notion of the state of the game. Using this approach, the game can be represented as a Markov process with substantially reduced number of states with explicitly computable probabilities. For any payoff, the finiteness of the number of states is proved. Interesting features of an extensive random variable, called aggregated demand, viz. its strong inhomogeneity and presence of patterns in time, can be easily interpreted. Using Markov theory and quenched disorder approach, we can explain important macroscopic characteristics of the game: behavior of variance per capita and predictability of the aggregated demand. We prove that in the case of linear payoff many attractors in the state space are possible.     

Statistical mechanics of systems with heterogeneous agents: minority games

We study analytically a simple game theoretical model of heterogeneous interacting agents. We show that the stationary state of the system is described by the ground state of a disordered spin model which is exactly solvable within the simple replica symmetric ansatz. Such a stationary state differs from the Nash equilibrium where each agent maximizes her own utility. The latter turns out to be characterized by a replica symmetry broken structure. Numerical results fully agree with our analytical findings.     

Detection of community overlap according to belief propagation and conflict

Most existing methods for detection of community overlap cannot balance efficiency and accuracy for large and densely overlapping networks. To quickly identify overlapping communities for such networks, we propose a new method that uses belief propagation and conflict (PCB) to occupy communities. We first identify triangles with maximal clustering coefficients as seed nodes and sow a new type of belief to the seed nodes. Then the beliefs explore their territory by occupying nodes with high assent ability. The beliefs propagate their strength along the graph to consolidate their territory, and conflict with each other when they encounter the same node simultaneously. Finally, the node membership is judged from the belief vectors. The PCB time complexity is nearly linear and its space complexity is linear. The algorithm was tested in extensive experiments on three real-world social networks and three computer-generated artificial graphs. The experimental results show that PCB is very fast and highly reliable. Tests on real and artificial networks give excellent results compared with three newly proposed overlapping community detection algorithms.     

Promotion of cooperation induced by the interplay between structure and game dynamics

We consider the coupled dynamics of the adaption of network structure and the evolution of strategies played by individuals occupying the network vertices. We propose a computational model in which each agent plays a n-round Prisoner's Dilemma game with its immediate neighbors, after that, based upon self-interest, partial individuals may punish their defective neighbors by dismissing the social tie to the one who defects the most times, meanwhile seek for a new partner at random from the neighbors of the punished agent. It is found that the promotion of cooperation is attributed to the entangled evolution of individual strategy and network structure. Moreover, we show that the emerging social networks exhibit high heterogeneity and disassortative mixing pattern. For a given average connectivity of the population and the number of rounds, there is a critical value for the fraction of individuals adapting their social interactions, above which cooperators wipe out defectors. Besides, the effects of the average degree, the number of rounds, and the intensity of selection are investigated by extensive numerical simulations. Our results to some extent reflect the underlying mechanism promoting cooperation.     

Evolutionary ultimatum game on complex networks under incomplete information

This paper studies the evolutionary ultimatum game on networks when agents have incomplete information about the strategies of their neighborhood agents. Our model assumes that agents may initially display low fairness behavior, and therefore, may have to learn and develop their own strategies in this unknown environment. The Genetic Algorithm Learning Classifier System (GALCS) is used in the model as the agent strategy learning rule. Aside from the Watts-Strogatz (WS) small-world network and its variations, the present paper also extends the spatial ultimatum game to the Barabási-Albert (BA) scale-free network. Simulation results show that the fairness level achieved is lower than in situations where agents have complete information about other agents’ strategies. The research results display that fairness behavior will always emerge regardless of the distribution of the initial strategies. If the strategies are randomly distributed on the network, then the long-term agent fairness levels achieved are very close given unchanged learning parameters. Neighborhood size also has little effect on the fairness level attained. The simulation results also imply that WS small-world and BA scale-free networks have different effects on the spatial ultimatum game. In ultimatum game on networks with incomplete information, the WS small-world network and its variations favor the emergence of fairness behavior slightly more than the BA network where agents are heterogeneously structured.     

Joint utility-based uplink power and rate allocation in wireless networks: A non-cooperative game theoretic framework

In this paper a novel utility-based game theoretic framework is proposed to address the problem of joint transmission power and rate allocation in the uplink of a cellular wireless network. Initially, each user is associated with a generic utility function, capable of properly expressing and representing mobile user’s degree of satisfaction, in relation to the allocated system’s resources for heterogeneous services with various transmission rates. Then, a Joint Utility-based uplink Power and Rate Allocation (JUPRA) game is formulated, where each user aims selfishly at maximizing his utility-based performance under the imposed physical limitations, and its unique Nash equilibrium is determined with respect to both variables, i.e. uplink transmission power and rate. The JUPRA game’s convergence to its unique Nash equilibrium is proven and a distributed, iterative and low complexity algorithm for computing JUPRA game’s equilibrium is introduced. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in detail and its superiority compared to various state of the art approaches is illustrated, while the contribution of each component of the proposed framework in its performance is quantified and analyzed.     

Epidemic spreading on networks with overlapping community structure

Many real networks are characterized by overlapping community structures in which vertices may belong to more than one community. In this paper, we propose a network model with overlapping community structure. The analytical and numerical results show that the connectivity distribution of this network follows a power law. We employ this network to investigate the impact of overlapping community structure on susceptible-infected-susceptible (SIS) epidemic spreading process. The simulation results indicate that significant overlapping community structure results in a major infection prevalence and leads to a peak of the spread velocity in the early stages of the emerging infection.     

Community structure discovery method based on the Gaussian kernel similarity matrix

Community structure discovery in complex networks is a popular issue, and overlapping community structure discovery in academic research has become one of the hot spots. Based on the Gaussian kernel similarity matrix and spectral bisection, this paper proposes a new community structure discovery method. First, by adjusting the Gaussian kernel parameter to change the scale of similarity, we can find the corresponding non-overlapping community structure when the value of the modularity is the largest relatively. Second, the changes of the Gaussian kernel parameter would lead to the unstable nodes jumping off, so with a slight change in method of non-overlapping community discovery, we can find the overlapping community nodes. Finally, synthetic data, karate club and political books datasets are used to test the proposed method, comparing with some other community discovery methods, to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this method.     

The Peter principle revisited: A computational study

In the late sixties the Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter advanced an apparently paradoxical principle, named since then after him, which can be summarized as follows: ‘Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he/she reaches his/her level of maximum incompetence’. Despite its apparent unreasonableness, such a principle would realistically act in any organization where the mechanism of promotion rewards the best members and where the competence at their new level in the hierarchical structure does not depend on the competence they had at the previous level, usually because the tasks of the levels are very different to each other. Here we show, by means of agent based simulations, that if the latter two features actually hold in a given model of an organization with a hierarchical structure, then not only is the Peter principle unavoidable, but also it yields in turn a significant reduction of the global efficiency of the organization. Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion strategies and we find, counterintuitively, that in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of competence.     

On the nature of a*kak and the emergence of the Born rule

This paper is intended to show that a review in the concept of the game theoretical utility, the revised utility to be applied to the definition of the utility of a wave function representing an object subsystem relative to its observer subsystem, both within an isolated system, leads to the emergence of Max Born's rule as a profit under a von Neumann good measure game.     

Fuzzy Representation of Principal’s Preferences in Inspire Negotiation Support System

We consider the negotiation problem, in which an agent negotiates on behalf of a principal. Our considerations are focused on the Inspire negotiation support system in which the principal’s preferences are visualised by circles. In this way, the principal describes the importance of each negotiation issue and the relative utility of each considered option. The paper proposes how this preference information may be implemented by the agent for determining a scoring function used to support decisions throughout the negotiation process. The starting point of our considerations is a discussion regarding the visualisation of the principal’s preferences. We assume here that the importance of each issue and the utility of each option increases with the size of the circle representing them. The imprecise meaning of the notion of “circle size” implies that in a considered case, the utility of an option should be evaluated by a fuzzy number. The proposed utility fuzzification is justified by a simple analysis of results obtained from the empirical prenegotiation experiment. A novel method is proposed to determine trapezoidal fuzzy numbers, which evaluates an option’s utility using a series of answers given by the participants of the experiment. The utilities obtained this way are applied to determine the fuzzy scoring function for an agent. By determining such a common generalised fuzzy scoring system, our approach helps agents handle the differences in human cognitive processes associated with understanding the principal’s preferences. This work is the first approach to fuzzification of the preferences in the Inspire negotiation support system.     

Robust network community detection using balanced propagation

Label propagation has proven to be an extremely fast method for detecting communities in large complex networks. Furthermore, due to its simplicity, it is also currently one of the most commonly adopted algorithms in the literature. Despite various subsequent advances, an important issue of the algorithm has not yet been properly addressed. Random (node) update orders within the algorithm severely hamper its robustness, and consequently also the stability of the identified community structure. We note that an update order can be seen as increasing propagation preferences from certain nodes, and propose a balanced propagation that counteracts for the introduced randomness by utilizing node balancers. We have evaluated the proposed approach on synthetic networks with planted partition, and on several real-world networks with community structure. The results confirm that balanced propagation is significantly more robust than label propagation, when the performance of community detection is even improved. Thus, balanced propagation retains high scalability and algorithmic simplicity of label propagation, but improves on its stability and performance.     

Local Minority Game with Evolutionary Strategies

We study a model of local minority game in the random Kauffman network with evolutionary strategies and propose three methods to update the strategy of poor agents, with lower points in a given generation： namely to update either the Boolean function of their strategies randomly, or their local information of randomly adjacent m agents, or the number m of randomly chosen adjacent agents. The results of extended numerical simulations show that the behaviour of strategies in the three methods may enhance significantly the entire coordination of agents in the system. It is also found that a poor agent tends to use both small m strategies and correlated strategies, and the strategies of agents will finally self-organize into a steady-state distribution for a long time playing of the game.     

Detect overlapping and hierarchical community structure in networks

Clustering and community structure is crucial for many network systems and the related dynamic processes. It has been shown that communities are usually overlapping and hierarchical. However, previous methods investigate these two properties of community structure separately. This paper proposes an algorithm (EAGLE) to detect both the overlapping and hierarchical properties of complex community structure together. This algorithm deals with the set of maximal cliques and adopts an agglomerative framework. The quality function of modularity is extended to evaluate the goodness of a cover. The examples of application to real world networks give excellent results.