Member-only story
How to Select the Most Influential Combination of Nodes in a Graph
This article discusses how to select a group of nodes with the highest combined influence on the graph.
When finding influential nodes in a graph, you can consider graph metrics such as centrality or degree, which tell you how influential a single node is. However, to find the most influential set of nodes in the graph, you must consider which combination of nodes has the highest influence on the graph, which is a challenging problem to solve. This article explores how you can approach the issue of choosing the most influential set of nodes from a graph.
Motivation
My motivation for this article is that I am currently working on my thesis, which involves semi-supervised clustering. In essence, I have to select some nodes from the graph that I can know the label of and then use that information to cluster the other nodes. Therefore, finding the most influential set of nodes to know the label is essential for the performance of my clustering algorithm. In this article’s case, influence over the graph will be regarded as how well the set of selected nodes can assist the clustering algorithm. However, this influence over the graph can also be generalized to other problems.