When analyzing weighted networks using spectral embedding, a judicious transformation of the edge weights may produce better results. To formalize this idea, we consider the asymptotic behavior of spectral embedding for different edge-weight representations, under a generic low rank model. We measure the quality of different embeddings—which can be on entirely different scales—by how easy it is to distinguish communities, in an information-theoretical sense. For common types of weighted graphs, such as count networks or p-value networks, we find that transformations such as tempering or thresholding can be highly beneficial, both in theory and in practice.

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In this work, we propose an adaptive wavelet-based approach for extracting primary dynamics in multivariate nonstationary time series.

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Update to GNAR to version 1.1.3

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The original generalized network autoregressive models are poor for modelling count data as they are based on the additive and constant noise assumptions, which is usually inappropriate for count data. We introduce two new models (GNARI and NGNAR) for count network time series by adapting and extending existing count-valued time series models. We present results on the statistical and asymptotic properties of our new models and their estimates obtained by conditional least squares and maximum likelihood. We conduct two simulation studies that verify successful parameter estimation for both models and conduct a further study that shows, for negative network parameters, that our NGNAR model outperforms existing models and our other GNARI model in terms of predictive performance. We model a network time series constructed from COVID-positive counts for counties in New York State during 2020--22 and show that our new models perform considerably better than existing methods for this problem.

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Network time series are becoming increasingly important across many areas in science and medicine and are often characterised by a known or inferred underlying network structure, which can be exploited to make sense of dynamic phenomena that are often high-dimensional. For example, the Generalised Network Autoregressive (GNAR) models exploit such structure parsimoniously. We use the GNAR framework to introduce two association measures: the network and partial network autocorrelation functions, and introduce Corbit (correlation-orbit) plots for visualisation. As with regular autocorrelation plots, Corbit plots permit interpretation of underlying correlation structures and, crucially, aid model selection more rapidly than using other tools such as AIC or BIC. We additionally interpret GNAR processes as generalised graphical models, which constrain the processes' autoregressive structure and exhibit interesting theoretical connections to graphical models via utilization of higher-order interactions. We demonstrate how incorporation of prior information is related to performing variable selection and shrinkage in the GNAR context. We illustrate the usefulness of the GNAR formulation, network autocorrelations and Corbit plots by modelling a COVID-19 network time series of the number of admissions to mechanical ventilation beds at 140 NHS Trusts in England & Wales. We introduce the Wagner plot that can analyse correlations over different time periods or with respect to external covariates. In addition, we introduce plots that quantify the relevance and influence of individual nodes. Our modelling provides insight on the underlying dynamics of the COVID-19 series, highlights two groups of geographically co-located `influential' NHS Trusts and demonstrates superior prediction abilities when compared to existing techniques.

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We propose a first-order autoregressive (i.e. AR(1)) model for dynamic network processes in which edges change over time while nodes remain unchanged. The model depicts the dynamic changes explicitly. It also facilitates simple and efficient statistical inference methods including a permutation test for diagnostic checking for the fitted network models. The proposed model can be applied to the network processes with various underlying structures but with independent edges. As an illustration, an AR(1) stochastic block model has been investigated in depth, which characterizes the latent communities by the transition probabilities over time. This leads to a new and more effective spectral clustering algorithm for identifying the latent communities. We have derived a finite sample condition under which the perfect recovery of the community structure can be achieved by the newly defined spectral clustering algorithm. Furthermore the inference for a change point is incorporated into the AR(1) stochastic block model to cater for possible structure changes. We have derived the explicit error rates for the maximum likelihood estimator of the change-point. Application with three real data sets illustrates both relevance and usefulness of the proposed AR(1) models and the associate inference methods.

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