English

Higher-order accurate two-sample network inference and network hashing

Methodology 2024-02-05 v3 Statistics Theory Machine Learning Statistics Theory

Abstract

Two-sample hypothesis testing for network comparison presents many significant challenges, including: leveraging repeated network observations and known node registration, but without requiring them to operate; relaxing strong structural assumptions; achieving finite-sample higher-order accuracy; handling different network sizes and sparsity levels; fast computation and memory parsimony; controlling false discovery rate (FDR) in multiple testing; and theoretical understandings, particularly regarding finite-sample accuracy and minimax optimality. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive toolbox, featuring a novel main method and its variants, all accompanied by strong theoretical guarantees, to address these challenges. Our method outperforms existing tools in speed and accuracy, and it is proved power-optimal. Our algorithms are user-friendly and versatile in handling various data structures (single or repeated network observations; known or unknown node registration). We also develop an innovative framework for offline hashing and fast querying as a very useful tool for large network databases. We showcase the effectiveness of our method through comprehensive simulations and applications to two real-world datasets, which revealed intriguing new structures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.07573,
  title  = {Higher-order accurate two-sample network inference and network hashing},
  author = {Meijia Shao and Dong Xia and Yuan Zhang and Qiong Wu and Shuo Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.07573},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-25T01:43:56.558Z