Learning Exponential Random Graph Models

Conditional Marginalization for Exponential Random Graph Models

For exponential random graph models, under quite general conditions, it is proved that induced subgraphs on node sets disconnected from the other nodes still have distributions from an exponential random graph model. This can help in the theoretical interpretation of such models. An application is that for saturated snowball samples from a potentially larger graph which is a realization of an e...

A Monte Carlo Metropolis-Hastings Algorithm for Sampling from Distributions with Intractable Normalizing Constants

Simulating from distributions with intractable normalizing constants has been a long-standing problem in machine learning. In this letter, we propose a new algorithm, the Monte Carlo Metropolis-Hastings (MCMH) algorithm, for tackling this problem. The MCMH algorithm is a Monte Carlo version of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. It replaces the unknown normalizing constant ratio by a Monte Carlo...

A Perfect Sampling Method for Exponential Random Graph Models

A Perfect Sampling Method for Exponential Family Random Graph Models

Generation of deviates from random graph models with non-trivial edge dependence is an increasingly important problem. Here, we introduce a method which allows perfect sampling from random graph models in exponential family form (“exponential family random graph” models), using a variant of Coupling From The Past. We illustrate the use of the method via an application to the Markov graphs, a fa...

Phase Transitions in Exponential Random Graphs

We derive the full phase diagram for a large family of exponential random graph models, each containing a first order transition curve ending in a critical point.