Community Structure in Time-Dependent, Multiscale, and Multiplex Networks

Network Notation

Networks are often characterized by clusters of constituents that interact more closely with each other and have more connections to one another than they do with the rest of the components of the network. However, systematically identifying and studying such community structure in complicated networks is not easy, especially when the network interactions change over time or contain multiple types of connections, as seen in many biological regulatory networks or social networks. Mucha et al. (p. 876 ) developed a mathematical method to allow detection of communities that may be critical functional units of such networks. Application to real-world tasks—like making sense of the voting record in the U.S. Senate—demonstrated the promise of the method.