Comparison of graph node distances on clustering tasks

Abstract

This work presents recent developments in graph node distances and tests them empirically on social network databases of various sizes and types. We compare two versions of a distance-based kernel k-means algorithm with the well-established Louvain method. The first version is a classic kernel k-means approach, the second version additionally makes use of node weights with the Sum-over-Forests density index. Both kernel k-means algorithms employ a variety of classic and modern distances. We compare the results of all three algorithms using statistical measures and an overall rank-comparison to ascertain their capabilities in community detection. Results show that two recently introduced distances outperform the others, on our tested datasets.