Bayesian Community Detection

Abstract

We introduce a Bayesian estimator of the underlying class structure in the stochastic block model, when the number of classes is known. The estimator is the posterior mode corresponding to a Dirichlet prior on the class proportions, a generalized Bernoulli prior on the class labels, and a beta prior on the edge probabilities. We show that this estimator is strongly consistent when the expected degree is at least of order ${log}^{2}n$, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the network.