Extracting Meaning From the Structure of Networks

Roland Piquepaille writes "Networks are used to represent the structure of complex systems, including the Internet or social networks, but often these descriptions are biased or incomplete. Now, researchers at the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) have shown that it's possible to extract automatically the hierarchical structure of networks. The researchers say their results 'suggest that hierarchy is a central organizing principle of complex networks, capable of offering insight into many network phenomena.' They also think that their algorithms can be applied to almost every kind of networks, from biochemical networks (protein interaction networks, metabolic networks or genetic regulatory networks) to communities in social networks. But read more for additional references and some pictures about hierarchical networks and their applications."

Omygosh what baloney

Can we have some real science please ?

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Can we have some real science please ?

Let me see... *tap tap tap* .. hmmm...

.. Computer says no I'm afraid.

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The parent is no troll! Yech this stuff is so silly. What are the applications that aren't "promised" for the future ? I am shocked that such vague nonsense of this is in the journal Nature.

Skeptics and arrogance.

"Yech this stuff is so silly. [snip] I am shocked that such vague nonsense of this is in the journal Nature."

The thing we should all be 'shocked' by is the number of so called geeks who dismiss genuine science/math with nothing more than vauge handwaves

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Yes, the GP is not a troll, he's a karma whore. If Roland posts a science article, the whores will denounce it as fast as they can in expectation that they will get mode points, and those that actually read the article will support them later. The sad thin

Roland the Plogger again

As is typical of a Roland the Plogger article, there's no link to the original article, but there's a link to his ad-laden blog. Here's the abstract [nanounion.net]:

Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks
Nature 453, 98 (2008). doi:10.1038/nature06830
Authors: Aaron Clauset, Cristopher Moore & M. E. J. Newman
Networks have in recent years emerged as an invaluable tool for describing and quantifying complex systems in many branches of science. Recent studies suggest that networks often exhibit hierarchical organization, in which vertices divide into groups that further subdivide into groups of groups, and so forth over multiple scales. In many cases the groups are found to correspond to known functional units, such as ecological niches in food webs, modules in biochemical networks (protein interaction networks, metabolic networks or genetic regulatory networks) or communities in social networks. Here we present a general technique for inferring hierarchical structure from network data and show that the existence of hierarchy can simultaneously explain and quantitatively reproduce many commonly observed topological properties of networks, such as right-skewed degree distributions, high clustering coefficients and short path lengths. We further show that knowledge of hierarchical structure can be used to predict missing connections in partly known networks with high accuracy, and for more general network structures than competing techniques. Taken together, our results suggest that hierarchy is a central organizing principle of complex networks, capable of offering insight into many network phenomena.

So now, unlike Roland, we now have a clue what's being talked about. It's a scheme for finding some structure in networks and inferring what links might be missing.

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The article is full of links: to the Nature article webage, to the authors' homepages, and even to a link with a .PDF containing the article itself. Did you actually read the ZDNet article?

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You must be new here...

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If by "new" you mean "I usually read the articles and don't comment often", then you're right. Are you trying to tell me that I did something wrong?

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It's just an old Slashdot joke. From Wikipedia: [wikipedia.org]

(Invoked frequently after a poster complains of a common Slashdot issue such as duplicate stories or perceived bias by certain editors)

In this case, noting that people on Slashdot in general don't read the articles. Don't take it personally -- the joke isn't meant to be at your expense.

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Ah - I see. Well, thanks for the explanation. :-)

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The problem is that the Slashdot article has links to places that get Roland the Plogger ad revenue, but doesn't have a link to the original paper. This is typical Roland the Plogger behavior.

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We further show that knowledge of hierarchical structure can be used to predict missing connections in partly known networks with high accuracy, ...

It's a scheme for ... inferring what links might be missing.

And this is the point where any sensible person

A more rational world

"But we don't really live in a rational world, do we?"

Parinoia is an ally of irrationality.

Your argument boils down to "a tool can be used for good or evil", now since good and evil are subjective that reduces to "a tool can be used". Taken in the co

Pencilnecked foureyed plagiarist

Roland Piquepaille writes

No he doesn't, he copies and pastes.

Nature?

How did such a poorly written, presented and researched paper get into Nature? Is it April 1 again?

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Clauset, Newman, and Moore are three of the most respected and well-known networks researchers. I'm not sure what you mean by being poorly presented or researched; care to elaborate? But how this blog post makes the front page of /. is beyond me. It tel

Article PDF

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/papers/cmn08.pdf [umich.edu]

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Thanks.

I've having trouble seeing meat there, however. I.e., I haven't detected enough detail to tell me what to think about the generality of their claims.

CAM

Piqued interest

If Roland Piquepaille posts another gee-wiz article on Slashdot with only this first post, does anyone care?

Is the hierarchical character intrinsic?

I'm not a mathematician, so maybe one can answer this question? I know that I can take pretty much any open (e.g. not a ring) topology and document it in a hierarchical model. Heck, if I'm permitted just a few multiple paths, I can model pretty much any

Danger of becoming another quantum theory

Don't get me wrong I think it sounds like a great tool for abstracting complex systems into neat boxes for human consumption.

I'm just imagining we'll have researchers wanting venture capital to create networks that can re-organise themselves simply by chan

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You know, like we used to have [a filter] for Jon Katz? So we don't have to even see anything he submits, since it's mostly old news or just recycled from a more credible source?

I was about to take offence at that statement, but then I realized I'm not Roland Pipe.. pip.. something.

But I had to laugh at the title. The meaning of the structure of networks is a stupid idea. The purpose maybe, the philosophy behind the structure m

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The meaning of the structure of networks is a stupid idea. The purpose maybe, the philosophy behind the structure maybe. But the meaning of?

In the context of the research (using known parts of a network's structure to predict unknown parts), I don't thin

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Considering this is a Roland article (and even more particularly silly than usual), I think you have summed up quite succinctly all the discussion that needs to be had on it here.