Modeling Heterophily in Multiplex Graphs: An Adaptive Approach for Node Classification

TL;DR

This paper introduces extmethodname, a novel adaptive method for node classification in multiplex graphs that effectively models both homophilic and heterophilic interactions across multiple edge types.

Contribution

It proposes dimension-specific compatibility matrices and a novel filter composition approach to adaptively handle heterophily in multiplex graphs.

Findings

extmethodname outperforms existing methods on synthetic and real datasets.

It effectively captures complex heterophilic and homophilic interactions.

The approach improves node classification accuracy in multiplex graphs.

Abstract

Existing multiplex graph models often assume homophily, where connected nodes tend to belong to the same class or share similar attributes. Consequently, these models may struggle with graphs exhibiting heterophily, where connected nodes typically belong to different classes and have dissimilar attributes. While recent methods have been developed to learn reliable node representations from unidimensional graphs with heterophily, they do not fully address the complexities of multiplex graphs. In a multiplex graph, nodes are linked through multiple types of edges (referred to as dimensions), which can simultaneously exhibit homophilic and heterophilic interactions. To address this gap, we propose \methodname, a novel method for node classification in multiplex graphs that adapts to both homophilic and heterophilic dimensions. \methodname introduces dimension-specific compatibility matrices to model varying degrees of homophily and heterophily across dimensions. A key innovation is its use of a product of trainable low-pass and high-pass filters, approximated via Chebyshev polynomials, to capture both smooth and abrupt changes in the graph signal. By composing these filters and optimizing label predictions using a proximal-gradient method, \methodname dynamically adjusts to the heterophilic characteristics of each dimension. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets provide evidence that \methodname captures the complex interplay of homophilic and heterophilic interactions in multiplex graphs, and tends to yield improved node classification performance compared to state-of-the-art methods.