Asymptotic mutual information for the balanced binary stochastic block model

Yash Deshpande, Emmanuel Abbe, Andrea Montanari

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

62 Scopus citations

Abstract

We develop an information-theoretic viewof the stochastic block model, a popular statistical model for the large-scale structure of complex networks. A graph G from such a model is generated by first assigning vertex labels at random from a finite alphabet, and then connecting vertices with edge probabilities depending on the labels of the endpoints. In the case of the symmetric two-group model, we establish an explicit 'single-letter' characterization of the per-vertex mutual information between the vertex labels and the graph, when the mean vertex degree diverges. The explicit expression of the mutual information is intimately related to estimation-theoretic quantities, and -in particular-reveals a phase transition at the critical point for community detection. Below the critical point the per-vertex mutual information is asymptotically the same as if edges were independent. Correspondingly, no algorithm can estimate the partition better than random guessing. Conversely, above the threshold, the per-vertex mutual information is strictly smaller than the independent-edges upper bound. In this regime, there exists a procedure that estimates the vertex labels better than random guessing.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)125-170
Number of pages46
JournalInformation and Inference
Volume6
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2017

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Analysis
  • Statistics and Probability
  • Numerical Analysis
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Applied Mathematics

Keywords

  • Approximate message passing
  • Community detection
  • Mutual information
  • Stochastic block model

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