Are we there yet? When to stop a Markov chain while generating random graphs

The literature in social network analysis has largely focused on methods and models which require complete network data; however there exist many networks which can only be studied via sampling methods due to the scale or complexity of the network, access limitations, or the population of interest is hard to reach. In such cases, the application of random walk-based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods to estimate multiple network features is common. However, the reliabili...

Random graphs with prescribed degree sequences have been widely used as a model of complex networks. Comparing an observed network to an ensemble of such graphs allows one to detect deviations from randomness in network properties. Here we briefly review two existing methods for the generation of random graphs with arbitrary degree sequences, which we call the ``switching'' and ``matching'' methods, and present a new method based on the ``go with the winners'' Monte Carlo met...

We discuss two sampling schemes for selecting random subnets from a network: Random sampling and connectivity dependent sampling, and investigate how the degree distribution of a node in the network is affected by the two types of sampling. Here we derive a necessary and sufficient condition that guarantees that the degree distribution of the subnet and the true network belong to the same family of probability distributions. For completely random sampling of nodes we find tha...

We study the distribution of cycles of length h in large networks (of size N>>1) and find it to be an excellent ergodic estimator, even in the extreme inhomogeneous case of scale-free networks. The distribution is sharply peaked around a characteristic cycle length, h* ~ N^a. Our results suggest that h* and the exponent a might usefully characterize broad families of networks. In addition to an exact counting of cycles in hierarchical nets, we present a Monte-Carlo sampling a...

Recent work on the structure of social networks and the internet has focussed attention on graphs with distributions of vertex degree that are significantly different from the Poisson degree distributions that have been widely studied in the past. In this paper we develop in detail the theory of random graphs with arbitrary degree distributions. In addition to simple undirected, unipartite graphs, we examine the properties of directed and bipartite graphs. Among other results...

We consider the problem of graph generation guided by network statistics, i.e., the generation of graphs which have given values of various numerical measures that characterize networks, such as the clustering coefficient and the number of cycles of given lengths. Algorithms for the generation of synthetic graphs are often based on graph growth models, i.e., rules of adding (and sometimes removing) nodes and edges to a graph that mimic the processes present in real-world netw...

Random networks are intensively used as null models to investigate properties of complex networks. We describe an efficient and accurate algorithm to generate arbitrarily two-point correlated undirected random networks without self- or multiple-edges among vertices. With the goal to systematically investigate the influence of two-point correlations, we furthermore develop a formalism to construct a joint degree distribution $P(j,k)$ which allows to fix an arbitrary degree dis...

A major line of contemporary research on complex networks is based on the development of statistical models that specify the local motifs associated with macro-structural properties observed in actual networks. This statistical approach becomes increasingly problematic as network size increases. In the context of current research on efficient estimation of models for large network data sets, we propose a fast algorithm for maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) that afords a sig...

We consider the problem of estimating the expected time to find a maximum degree node on a graph using a (parameterized) biased random walk. For assortative graphs the positive degree correlation serves as a local gradient for which a bias towards selecting higher degree neighbors will on average reduce the search time. Unfortunately, although the expected absorption time on the graph can be written down using the theory of absorbing Markov chains, computing this time is infe...

Sampling from combinatorial families can be difficult. However, complicated families can often be embedded within larger, simpler ones, for which easy sampling algorithms are known. We take advantage of such a relationship to describe a sampling algorithm for the smaller family, via a Markov chain started at a random sample of the larger family. The utility of the method is demonstrated via several examples, with particular emphasis on sampling labelled graphs with given degr...