English

Generic criticality of community structure in random graphs

Statistical Mechanics 2015-06-18 v2 Social and Information Networks Physics and Society

Abstract

We examine a community structure in random graphs of size nn and link probability p/np/n determined with the Newman greedy optimization of modularity. Calculations show that for p<1p<1 communities are nearly identical with clusters. For p=1p=1 the average sizes of a community savs_{av} and of the giant community sgs_g show a power-law increase savnαs_{av}\sim n^{\alpha'} and sgnαs_g\sim n^{\alpha}. From numerical results we estimate α0.26(1)\alpha'\approx 0.26(1), α0.50(1)\alpha\approx 0.50(1), and using the probability distribution of sizes of communities we suggest that α=α/2\alpha'=\alpha/2 should hold. For p>1p>1 the community structure remains critical: (i) savs_{av} and sgs_g have a power law increase with αα<1\alpha'\approx\alpha <1; (ii) the probability distribution of sizes of communities is very broad and nearly flat for all sizes up to sgs_g. For large pp the modularity QQ decays as Qp0.55Q\sim p^{-0.55}, which is intermediate between some previous estimations. To check the validity of the results, we also determined the community structure using another method, namely a non-greedy optimization of modularity. Tests with some benchmark networks show that the method outperforms the greedy version. For random graphs, however, the characteristics of the community structure determined using both greedy an non-greedy optimizations are, within small statistical fluctuations, the same.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1312.6494,
  title  = {Generic criticality of community structure in random graphs},
  author = {Adam Lipowski and Dorota Lipowska},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.6494},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, non-greedy optimization added, Phys. Rev. E (accepted)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:33:53.253Z