Improving heuristics for network modularity maximization using an exact algorithm

  • Authors:
  • Sonia Cafieri;Pierre Hansen;Leo Liberti

  • Affiliations:
  • Laboratoire MAIAA, ícole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile, 7 Av. E. Belin, 31055 Toulouse, France;GERAD and HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Canada, H3T 2A7 and LIX, ícole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France;LIX, ícole Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France

  • Venue:
  • Discrete Applied Mathematics
  • Year:
  • 2014

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.04

Visualization

Abstract

Heuristics are widely applied to modularity maximization models for the identification of communities in complex networks. We present an approach to be applied as a post-processing to heuristic methods in order to improve their performances. Starting from a given partition, we test with an exact algorithm for bipartitioning if it is worthwhile to split some communities or to merge two of them. A combination of merge and split actions is also performed. Computational experiments show that the proposed approach is effective in improving heuristic results.