Large Very Dense Subgraphs in a Stream of Edges

Abstract

We study the detection and the reconstruction of a large very dense subgraph in a social graph with $n$ nodes and $m$ edges given as a stream of edges, when the graph follows a power law degree distribution, in the regime when $m=O(n. \log n)$. A subgraph $S$ is very dense if it has $\Omega(|S|^2)$ edges. We uniformly sample the edges with a Reservoir of size $k=O(\sqrt{n}.\log n)$. Our detection algorithm checks whether the Reservoir has a giant component. We show that if the graph contains a very dense subgraph of size $\Omega(\sqrt{n})$, then the detection algorithm is almost surely correct. On the other hand, a random graph that follows a power law degree distribution almost surely has no large very dense subgraph, and the detection algorithm is almost surely correct. We define a new model of random graphs which follow a power law degree distribution and have large very dense subgraphs. We then show that on this class of random graphs we can reconstruct a good approximation of the very dense subgraph with high probability. We generalize these results to dynamic graphs defined by sliding windows in a stream of edges.