
Community detection is one of the most important methodological fields of network science, and one which has attracted a significant amount of attention over the past decades. This area deals with the automated division of a network into fundamental building blocks, with the objective of providing a summary of its large-scale structure. Despite its importance and widespread adoption, there is a noticeable gap between what is arguably the state-of-the-art and the methods which are actually used in practice in a variety of fields. The Elements attempts to address this discrepancy by dividing existing methods according to whether they have a 'descriptive' or an 'inferential' goal. While descriptive methods find patterns in networks based on context-dependent notions of community structure, inferential methods articulate a precise generative model, and attempt to fit it to data. In this way, they are able to provide insights into formation mechanisms and separate structure from noise. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
network science, thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PH Physics::PHS Statistical physics, computational geometry, statistical physics, algorithmics, complex systems, complexity, computer algebra
network science, thema EDItEUR::P Mathematics and Science::PH Physics::PHS Statistical physics, computational geometry, statistical physics, algorithmics, complex systems, complexity, computer algebra
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 44 | |
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| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Top 10% | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 1% |
