How strong is strong? The challenge of interpreting network edge weights.

ABSTRACT: Weighted networks are information-rich and highly-flexible, but they can be difficult to analyze because the interpretation of edges weights is often ambiguous. Specifically, the meaning of a given edge's weight is locally contingent, so that a given weight may be strong for one dyad, but weak for other dyad, even in the same network. I use backbone models to distinguish strong and weak edges in a corpus of 110 weighted networks, and used the results to examine the magnitude of this ambiguity. Although strong edges have larger weights than weak edges on average, a large fraction of edges' weights provide ambiguous information about whether it is strong or weak. Based on these results, I recommend that strong edges should be identified by applying an appropriate backbone model, and that onc

SUBMITTER: Neal ZP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11449300 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature