Sampling random graph homomorphisms and applications to network data analysis

A graph homomorphism is a map between two graphs that preserves adjacency relations. We consider the problem of sampling a random graph homomorphism from a graph $F$ into a large network $\mathcal{G}$. When $\mathcal{G}$ is the complete graph with $q$ nodes, this becomes the well-known problem of sampling uniform $q$-colorings of $F$. We propose two complementary MCMC algorithms for sampling a random graph homomorphisms and establish bounds on their mixing times and concentration of their time averages. Based on our sampling algorithms, we propose a novel framework for network data analysis that circumvents some of the drawbacks in methods based on independent and neigborhood sampling. Various time averages of the MCMC trajectory give us real-, function-, and network-valued computable observables, including well-known ones such as homomorphism density and average clustering coefficient. One of the main observable we propose is called the conditional homomorphism density profile, which reveals hierarchical structure of the network. Furthermore, we show that these network observables are stable with respect to a suitably renormalized cut distance between networks. We also provide various examples and simulations demonstrating our framework through synthetic and real-world networks. For instance, we apply our framework to analyze Word Adjacency Networks of a 45 novels data set and propose an authorship attribution scheme using motif sampling and conditional homomorphism density profiles.