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Outward Influence and Cascade Size Estimation in Billion-scale Networks

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Published:13 June 2017Publication History
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Abstract

Estimating cascade size and nodes' influence is a fundamental task in social, technological, and biological networks. Yet this task is extremely challenging due to the sheer size and the structural heterogeneity of networks. We investigate a new influence measure, termed outward influence (OI), defined as the (expected) number of nodes that a subset of nodes S will activate, excluding the nodes in S. Thus, OI equals, the de facto standard measure, influence spread of S minus |S|. OI is not only more informative for nodes with small influence, but also, critical in designing new effective sampling and statistical estimation methods.

Based on OI, we propose SIEA/SOIEA, novel methods to estimate influence spread/outward influence at scale and with rigorous theoretical guarantees. The proposed methods are built on two novel components 1) IICP an important sampling method for outward influence; and 2) RSA, a robust mean estimation method that minimize the number of samples through analyzing variance and range of random variables. Compared to the state-of-the art for influence estimation, SIEA is Ω(log4 n) times faster in theory and up to several orders of magnitude faster in practice. For the first time, influence of nodes in the networks of billions of edges can be estimated with high accuracy within a few minutes. Our comprehensive experiments on real-world networks also give evidence against the popular practice of using a fixed number, e.g. 10K or 20K, of samples to compute the "ground truth" for influence spread.

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        cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems
        Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems  Volume 1, Issue 1
        June 2017
        712 pages
        EISSN:2476-1249
        DOI:10.1145/3107080
        Issue’s Table of Contents

        Copyright © 2017 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 13 June 2017
        Published in pomacs Volume 1, Issue 1

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