Community Detection with Contextual Multilayer Networks

Abstract: In this paper, we study community detection when we observe $m$ sparse networks and a high dimensional covariate matrix, all encoding the same community structure among $n$ subjects. In the asymptotic regime where the number of features $p$ and the number of subjects $n$ grows proportionally, we derive an exact formula of asymptotic minimum mean square error (MMSE) for estimating the common community structure in the balanced two block case. The formula implies the necessity of integrating information from multiple data sources. Consequently, it induces a sharp threshold of phase transition between the regime where detection (i.e., weak recovery) is possible and the regime where no procedure performs better than a random guess. The asymptotic MMSE depends on the covariate signal-to-noise ratio in a more subtle way than the phase transition threshold does. In the special case of $m=1$, our asymptotic MMSE formula complements the pioneering work of Deshpande et. al. (2018) which found the sharp threshold when $m=1$.