English

Optimizing Edge Sets in Networks to Produce Ground Truth Communities Based on Modularity

Social and Information Networks 2022-05-23 v2 Optimization and Control

Abstract

We consider two new problems regarding the impact of edge addition or removal on the modularity of partitions (or community structures) in a network. The first problem seeks to add edges to enforce that a desired partition is the partition that maximizes modularity. The second problem seeks to find the sparsest representation of a network that has the same partition with maximum modularity as the original network. We present integer programming formulations, a row generation algorithm, and heuristic algorithms to solve these problems. Further, we demonstrate a counter-intuitive behavior of modularity that makes the development of heuristics for general networks difficult. We then present results on a selection of social and illicit networks from the literature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.09351,
  title  = {Optimizing Edge Sets in Networks to Produce Ground Truth Communities Based on Modularity},
  author = {Daniel Kosmas and John E. Mitchell and Thomas C. Sharkey and Boleslaw K. Szymanski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.09351},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T00:15:20.814Z