Bi-relational Network Analysis Using a Fast Random Walk with Restart

Identification of nodes relevant to a given node in a relational network is a basic problem in network analysis with great practical importance. Most existing network analysis algorithms utilize one single relation to define relevancy among nodes. However, in real world applications multiple relationships exist between nodes in a network. Therefore, network analysis algorithms that can make use of more than one relation to identify the relevance set for a node are needed. In this paper, we show how the Random Walk with Restart (RWR) approach can be used to study relevancy in a bi-relational network from the bibliographic domain, and show that making use of two relations results in better results as compared to approaches that use a single relation. As relational networks can be very large, we also propose a fast implementation for RWR by adapting an existing Iterative Aggregation and Disaggregation (IAD) approach. The IAD-based RWR exploits the block-wise structure of real world networks. Experimental results show significant increase in running time for the IAD-based RWR compared to the traditional power method based RWR.