IngentaConnect Building an Effective Representation for Dynamic Networks

Authors: Hill, Shawndra¹; Agarwal, Deepak K.²; Bell, Robert²; Volinsky, Chris²

Source: Journal of Computational & Graphical Statistics, Volume 15, Number 3, September 2006 , pp. 584-608(25)

Publisher: American Statistical Association

Abstract:

A dynamic network is a special type of network composed of connected transactors which have repeated evolving interaction. Data on large dynamic networks such as telecommunications networks and the Internet are pervasive. However, representing dynamic networks in a manner that is conducive to efficient large-scale analysis is a challenge. In this article, we represent dynamic graphs using a data structure introduced in an earlier article. We advocate their representation because it accounts for the evolution of relationships between transactors through time, mitigates noise at the local transactor level, and allows for the removal of stale relationships. Our work improves on their heuristic arguments by formalizing the representation with three tunable parameters. In doing this, we develop a generic framework for evaluating and tuning any dynamic graph. We show that the storage saving approximations involved in the representation do not affect predictive performance, and typically improve it. We motivate our approach using a fraud detection example from the telecommunications industry, and demonstrate that we can outperform published results on the fraud detection task. In addition, we present a preliminary analysis on Web logs and e-mail networks.

Keywords: APPROXIMATE SUBGRAPHS; DYNAMIC GRAPHS; EXPONENTIAL AVERAGING; FRAUD DETECTION; LINK PREDICTION; STATISTICAL RELATIONAL LEARNING; TRANSACTIONAL DATA STREAMS

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1198/106186006X139162

Affiliations: 1: Operations and Information Management Department, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, 3730 Walnut Street, Suite 500, Philadelphia, PA 19104 2: Statistics Research Department, AT&T Labs-Research, 180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932

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