A Survey of Link Prediction Algorithms

Abstract

The problem of link prediction, predicting if two nodes in a network have a connection between them, is a theoretical problem with numerous field-agnostic real-world applications. This paper investigates the efficacy of three classes of link prediction algorithms: local node similarity heuristics, the global index Random Walk with Restart, and Node2Vec embeddings. Furthermore, this paper provides insight into the performance of canonical link prediction algorithms on small graphs. The graphs included in this study are sampled from various domains, including infrastructure and ecological networks.