Sciweavers

MP
2011

Statistical ranking and combinatorial Hodge theory

12 years 10 months ago
Statistical ranking and combinatorial Hodge theory
We propose a number of techniques for obtaining a global ranking from data that may be incomplete and imbalanced — characteristics that are almost universal to modern datasets coming from e-commerce and internet applications. We are primarily interested in cardinal data based on scores or ratings though our methods also give specific insights on ordinal data. From raw ranking data, we construct pairwise rankings, represented as edge flows on an appropriate graph. Our statistical ranking method exploits the graph Helmholtzian, which is the graph theoretic analogue of the Helmholtz operator or vector Laplacian, in much the same way the graph Laplacian is an analogue of the Laplace operator or scalar Laplacian. We shall study the graph Helmholtzian using combinatorial Hodge theory, which provides a way to unravel ranking information from edge flows. In particular, we show that every edge flow representing pairwise ranking can be resolved into two orthogonal components, a gradient ...
Xiaoye Jiang, Lek-Heng Lim, Yuan Yao, Yinyu Ye
Added 14 May 2011
Updated 14 May 2011
Type Journal
Year 2011
Where MP
Authors Xiaoye Jiang, Lek-Heng Lim, Yuan Yao, Yinyu Ye
Comments (0)