Optimization Algorithms for Detection of Social Interactions

Abstract

Community detection is one of the most challenging and interesting problems in many research areas. Being able to detect highly linked communities in a network can lead to many benefits, such as understanding relationships between entities or interactions between biological genes, for instance. Two different immunological algorithms have been designed for this problem, called Opt-IA and Hybrid-IA, respectively. The main difference between the two algorithms is the search strategy and related immunological operators developed: the first carries out a random search together with purely stochastic operators; the last one is instead based on a deterministic Local Search that tries to refine and improve the current solutions discovered. The robustness of Opt-IA and Hybrid-IA has been assessed on several real social networks. These same networks have also been considered for comparing both algorithms with other seven different metaheuristics and the well-known greedy optimization Louvain algorithm. The experimental analysis conducted proves that Opt-IA and Hybrid-IA are reliable optimization methods for community detection, outperforming all compared algorithms.

Editorial for the Special Issue on “Algorithms for Graphs and Networks”

“…The fourth article in this Special Issue focuses on the problem of community detection in social networks [4]. At the time that I am writing this editorial, the world is suffering greatly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Group Dynamics in Memory-Enhanced Ant Colonies: The Influence of Colony Division on a Maze Navigation Problem

“…Network analysis finds application in human fields such as sociology [1,2], economics [3][4][5], biology [6,7], medicine [8,9], and many others. For example, in sociology, network analysis can identify online communities [10,11] and social interactions [12] or measure social influence within a friendship network. In economics, we can analyze business relationships and understand how the interconnection between companies affects market stability.…”