backbone (version 2.0.3)

fixedfill: Extract backbone using the Fixed Fill Model

Description

fixedfill extracts the backbone of a bipartite projection using the Fixed Fill Model.

Usage

fixedfill(
  B,
  alpha = 0.05,
  signed = FALSE,
  mtc = "none",
  class = "original",
  narrative = FALSE
)

Arguments

B

An unweighted bipartite graph, as: (1) an incidence matrix in the form of a matrix or sparse Matrix; (2) an edgelist in the form of a two-column dataframe; (3) an igraph object; (4) a network object. Any rows and columns of the associated bipartite matrix that contain only zeros or only ones are automatically removed before computations.

alpha

real: significance level of hypothesis test(s)

signed

boolean: TRUE for a signed backbone, FALSE for a binary backbone (see details)

mtc

string: type of Multiple Test Correction to be applied; can be any method allowed by p.adjust.

class

string: the class of the returned backbone graph, one of c("original", "matrix", "sparseMatrix", "igraph", "network", "edgelist"). If "original", the backbone graph returned is of the same class as B.

narrative

boolean: TRUE if suggested text & citations should be displayed.

Value

If alpha != NULL: Binary or signed backbone graph of class class.

If alpha == NULL: An S3 backbone object containing three matrices (the weighted graph, edges' upper-tail p-values, edges' lower-tail p-values), and a string indicating the null model used to compute p-values, from which a backbone can subsequently be extracted using backbone.extract(). The signed, mtc, class, and narrative parameters are ignored.

Details

The fixedfill function compares an edge's observed weight in the projection \(B*t(B)\) to the distribution of weights expected in a projection obtained from a random bipartite graph where the number of edges present (i.e., the number of cells filled with a 1) is equal to the number of edges in B. When B is large, this function may be impractically slow and may return a backbone object that contains NaN values.

When signed = FALSE, a one-tailed test (is the weight stronger) is performed for each edge with a non-zero weight. It yields a backbone that perserves edges whose weights are significantly stronger than expected under the null model. When signed = TRUE, a two-tailed test (is the weight stronger or weaker) is performed for each every pair of nodes. It yields a backbone that contains positive edges for edges whose weights are significantly stronger, and negative edges for edges whose weights are significantly weaker, than expected in the chosen null model. NOTE: Before v2.0.0, all significance tests were two-tailed and zero-weight edges were evaluated.

References

Neal, Z. P., Domagalski, R., and Sagan, B. (2021). Comparing Alternatives to the Fixed Degree Sequence Model for Extracting the Backbone of Bipartite Projections. Scientific Reports, 11, 23929. 10.1038/s41598-021-03238-3

Examples

# NOT RUN {
#A binary bipartite network of 30 agents & 75 artifacts; agents form three communities
B <- rbind(cbind(matrix(rbinom(250,1,.8),10),
                 matrix(rbinom(250,1,.2),10),
                 matrix(rbinom(250,1,.2),10)),
           cbind(matrix(rbinom(250,1,.2),10),
                 matrix(rbinom(250,1,.8),10),
                 matrix(rbinom(250,1,.2),10)),
           cbind(matrix(rbinom(250,1,.2),10),
                 matrix(rbinom(250,1,.2),10),
                 matrix(rbinom(250,1,.8),10)))

P <- B%*%t(B) #An ordinary weighted projection...
plot(igraph::graph_from_adjacency_matrix(P, mode = "undirected",
                                         weighted = TRUE, diag = FALSE)) #...is a dense hairball

bb <- fixedfill(B, alpha = 0.05, narrative = TRUE, class = "igraph") #A fixedfill backbone...
plot(bb) #...is sparse with clear communities
# }