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Seminar Series: Cosma Shalizi

Cosma Shalizi
January 21, 2021
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Virtual Event

Title

Nonparametric Estimation and Comparison for Networks

Meeting Link

Speaker

Cosma Shalizi - Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Statistics

Abstract

Scientific questions about networks are often comparative: we want to know whether the difference between two networks is just noise, and, if not, how their structures differ.  I'll describe a general framework for network comparison, based on testing whether the distance between models estimated from separate networks exceeds what we'd expect based on a pooled estimate.  This framework is especially powerful with nonparametric network models, such as densities of latent node locations, or continuous generalizations of block models ("graphons"); the estimation methods for those models also let us generate surrogate data, predict links, and summarize structure. (Joint work with Dena Asta, Brian Karrer, and Lawrence Wang.)