Constraint-based Pattern Mining in Dynamic Graphs
Résumé
Dynamic graphs are used to represent relationships between entities
that evolve over time. Meaningful patterns in such structured data
must capture strong interactions and their evolution over time. In
social networks, such patterns can be seen as dynamic community
structures, i.e., sets of individuals who strongly and repeatedly
interact. In this paper, we propose a constraint-based mining approach
to uncover evolving patterns. We propose to mine dense and isolated
subgraphs defined by two user-parameterized constraints. The temporal
evolution of such patterns is captured by associating a temporal event
type to each identified subgraph. We consider five basic temporal
events: The formation, dissolution, growth, diminution and stability
of subgraphs from one time stamp to the next. We propose an
algorithm that finds such subgraphs in a time series of graphs
processed incrementally. The extraction is feasible due to efficient
patterns and data pruning strategies. We demonstrate the applicability
of our method on several real-world dynamic graphs and extract
meaningful evolving communities.