TY - JOUR
T1 - Communities and beyond
T2 - Mesoscopic analysis of a large social network with complementary methods
AU - Tibély, Gergely
AU - Kovanen, Lauri
AU - Karsai, Márton
AU - Kaski, Kimmo
AU - Kertész, János
AU - Saramäki, Jari
PY - 2011/5/31
Y1 - 2011/5/31
N2 - Community detection methods have so far been tested mostly on small empirical networks and on synthetic benchmarks. Much less is known about their performance on large real-world networks, which nonetheless are a significant target for application. We analyze the performance of three state-of-the-art community detection methods by using them to identify communities in a large social network constructed from mobile phone call records. We find that all methods detect communities that are meaningful in some respects but fall short in others, and that there often is a hierarchical relationship between communities detected by different methods. Our results suggest that community detection methods could be useful in studying the general mesoscale structure of networks, as opposed to only trying to identify dense structures.
AB - Community detection methods have so far been tested mostly on small empirical networks and on synthetic benchmarks. Much less is known about their performance on large real-world networks, which nonetheless are a significant target for application. We analyze the performance of three state-of-the-art community detection methods by using them to identify communities in a large social network constructed from mobile phone call records. We find that all methods detect communities that are meaningful in some respects but fall short in others, and that there often is a hierarchical relationship between communities detected by different methods. Our results suggest that community detection methods could be useful in studying the general mesoscale structure of networks, as opposed to only trying to identify dense structures.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79961089170&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.1006.0418
DO - 10.48550/arXiv.1006.0418
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79961089170
SN - 1539-3755
VL - 83
JO - Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics
JF - Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics
IS - 5
M1 - 056125
ER -