On merging and dividing social graphs

Abstract

Modeling social interaction can be based on graphs. However most models lack the flexibility of including larger changes over time. The Barabási-Albert-model is a generative model which already offers mechanisms for adding nodes. We will extent this by presenting four methods for merging and five for dividing graphs based on the Barabási-Albert-model. Our algorithms were motivated by different real world scenarios and focus on preserving graph properties derived from these scenarios. With little alterations in the parameter estimation those algorithms can be used for other graph models as well. All algorithms were tested in multiple experiments using graphs based on the Barabási-Albert-model, an extended version of the Barabási-Albert-model by Holme and Kim, the Watts-Strogatz-model and the Erdos-Rényi-model. Furthermore we concluded that our algorithms are able to preserve different properties of graphs independently from the used model. To support the choice of algorithm, we created a guideline which highlights advantages and disadvantages of discussed methods and their possible use-cases.