Active Learning for Graph Embedding

TL;DR

This paper introduces AGE, an active learning framework for semi-supervised graph embedding that intelligently selects nodes for labeling to improve graph analysis performance, combining graph structure and embedding uncertainty.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel active learning strategy for graph embedding that adaptively combines graph-based and embedding-based criteria using time-sensitive parameters.

Findings

The proposed query strategy improves node classification accuracy.

Combining multiple criteria enhances the selection of informative nodes.

Experiments on three datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of AGE.

Abstract

Graph embedding provides an efficient solution for graph analysis by converting the graph into a low-dimensional space which preserves the structure information. In contrast to the graph structure data, the i.i.d. node embedding can be processed efficiently in terms of both time and space. Current semi-supervised graph embedding algorithms assume the labelled nodes are given, which may not be always true in the real world. While manually label all training data is inapplicable, how to select the subset of training data to label so as to maximize the graph analysis task performance is of great importance. This motivates our proposed active graph embedding (AGE) framework, in which we design a general active learning query strategy for any semi-supervised graph embedding algorithm. AGE selects the most informative nodes as the training labelled nodes based on the graphical information (i.e., node centrality) as well as the learnt node embedding (i.e., node classification uncertainty and node embedding representativeness). Different query criteria are combined with the time-sensitive parameters which shift the focus from graph based query criteria to embedding based criteria as the learning progresses. Experiments have been conducted on three public data sets and the results verified the effectiveness of each component of our query strategy and the power of combining them using time-sensitive parameters. Our code is available online at: https://github.com/vwz/AGE.