Ensemble-Based Discovery of Disjoint, Overlapping and Fuzzy Community Structures in Networks

Abstract: Though much work has been done on ensemble clustering in data mining, the application of ensemble methods to community detection in networks is in its infancy. In this paper, we propose two ensemble methods: ENDISCO and MEDOC. ENDISCO performs disjoint community detection. In contrast, MEDOC performs disjoint, overlapping, and fuzzy community detection and represents the first ever ensemble method for fuzzy and overlapping community detection. We run extensive experiments with both algorithms against both synthetic and several real-world datasets for which community structures are known. We show that ENDISCO and MEDOC both beat the best-known existing standalone community detection algorithms (though we emphasize that they leverage them). In the case of disjoint community detection, we show that both ENDISCO and MEDOC beat an existing ensemble community detection algorithm both in terms of multiple accuracy measures and run-time. We further show that our ensemble algorithms can help explore core-periphery structure of network communities, identify stable communities in dynamic networks and help solve the "degeneracy of solutions" problem, generating robust results.