A Node-collaboration-informed Graph Convolutional Network for Precise Representation to Undirected Weighted Graphs

TL;DR

This paper introduces NGCN, a novel graph convolutional network that incorporates latent node collaboration information to improve representation accuracy on undirected weighted graphs, especially for missing data estimation.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new node-collaboration module integrated into GCNs, enhancing their ability to model latent collaborations and improve performance on real-world weighted graphs.

Findings

NGCN outperforms existing GCNs in missing weight estimation tasks

The model effectively captures latent node collaborations

It demonstrates good scalability with advanced GCN extensions

Abstract

An undirected weighted graph (UWG) is frequently adopted to describe the interactions among a solo set of nodes from real applications, such as the user contact frequency from a social network services system. A graph convolutional network (GCN) is widely adopted to perform representation learning to a UWG for subsequent pattern analysis tasks such as clustering or missing data estimation. However, existing GCNs mostly neglects the latent collaborative information hidden in its connected node pairs. To address this issue, this study proposes to model the node collaborations via a symmetric latent factor analysis model, and then regards it as a node-collaboration module for supplementing the collaboration loss in a GCN. Based on this idea, a Node-collaboration-informed Graph Convolutional Network (NGCN) is proposed with three-fold ideas: a) Learning latent collaborative information from the interaction of node pairs via a node-collaboration module; b) Building the residual connection and weighted representation propagation to obtain high representation capacity; and c) Implementing the model optimization in an end-to-end fashion to achieve precise representation to the target UWG. Empirical studies on UWGs emerging from real applications demonstrate that owing to its efficient incorporation of node-collaborations, the proposed NGCN significantly outperforms state-of-the-art GCNs in addressing the task of missing weight estimation. Meanwhile, its good scalability ensures its compatibility with more advanced GCN extensions, which will be further investigated in our future studies.