Cascade Size Distributions and Why They Matter

How likely is it that a few initial node activations are amplified to produce large response cascades that span a considerable part of an entire network? Our answer to this question relies on the Independent Cascade Model for weighted directed networks. In using this model, most of our insights have been derived from the study of average effects. Here, we shift the focus on the full probability distribution of the final cascade size. This shift allows us to explore both typical cascade outcomes and improbable but relevant extreme events. We present an efficient message passing algorithm to compute the final cascade size distribution and activation probabilities of nodes conditional on the final cascade size. Our approach is exact on trees but can be applied to any network topology. It approximates locally tree-like networks well and can lead to surprisingly good performance on more dense networks, as we show using real world data, including a miRNA- miRNA probabilistic interaction network for gastrointestinal cancer. We demonstrate the utility of our algorithms for clustering of nodes according to their functionality and influence maximization.