A Distributed Bagging Ensemble Methodology for Community Prediction in Social Networks

Abstract

Presently, due to the extended availability of gigantic information networks and the beneficial application of graph analysis in various scientific fields, the necessity for efficient and highly scalable community detection algorithms has never been more essential. Despite the significant amount of published research, the existing methods—such as the Girvan–Newman, random-walk edge betweenness, vertex centrality, InfoMap, spectral clustering, etc.—have virtually been proven incapable of handling real-life social graphs due to the intrinsic computational restrictions that lead to mediocre performance and poor scalability. The purpose of this article is to introduce a novel, distributed community detection methodology which in accordance with the community prediction concept, leverages the reduced complexity and the decreased variance of the bagging ensemble methods, to unveil the subjacent community hierarchy. The proposed approach has been thoroughly tested, meticulously compared against different classic community detection algorithms, and practically proven exceptionally scalable, eminently efficient, and promisingly accurate in unfolding the underlying community structure.