Abstract We examine two greedy heuristics — wiring and rewiring — for constructing maximum assortative graphs over all simple connected graphs with a target degree sequence. Counterexamples show that natural greedy rewiring heuristics do not necessarily return a maximum assortative graph, even though it is known that the meta-graph of all simple connected graphs with given degree is connected under rewiring. Counterexamples show an elegant greedy graph wiring heuristic from the literature may fail to achieve the target degree sequence or may fail to wire a maximally assortative graph.
Rewiring. The meta-graph for a degree sequence, with a vertex for each connected simple graph with that degree sequence and an edge connecting graphs related by rewiring a pair of edges, was studied by Taylor @cite_17 ; in particular, he showed this meta-graph to be connected (Thm. 3.3) extending an earlier result by Rysler for simple graphs @cite_9 . This fact is used in rewiring .
@cite_9 @cite_17
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This paper investigates realizations of a given degree sequence, and the way in which they are related by switchings. The results are given in the context of simple graphs, multigraphs and pseudographs. We show that we can transform any connected graph to any other connected graph of the same degree sequence, by switchings wich are constrained to connected graphs. This is done for certain labelled graphs, the result for unlabelled graphs following as a corollary. The results are then extended to infinite degree sequences. Newman’s measure for (dis)assortativity, the linear degree correlation coefficient ?D, is reformulated in terms of the total number Nk of walks in the graph with k hops. This reformulation allows us to derive a new formula from which a degree-preserving rewiring algorithm is deduced, that, in each rewiring step, either increases or decreases ?D conform our desired objective. Spectral metrics (eigenvalues of graph-related matrices), especially, the largest eigenvalue ?1 of the adjacency matrix and the algebraic connectivity ?N?1 (second-smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian) are powerful characterizers of dynamic processes on networks such as virus spreading and synchronization processes. We present various lower bounds for the largest eigenvalue ?1 of the adjacency matrix and we show, apart from some classes of graphs such as regular graphs or bipartite graphs, that the lower bounds for ?1 increase with ?D. A new upper bound for the algebraic connectivity ?N?1 decreases with ?D. Applying the degree-preserving rewiring algorithm to various real-world networks illustrates that (a) assortative degree-preserving rewiring increases ?1, but decreases ?N?1, even leading to disconnectivity of the networks in many disjoint clusters and that (b) disassortative degree-preserving rewiring decreases ?1, but increases the algebraic connectivity, at least in the initial rewirings. In network modeling of complex systems one is often required to sample random realizations of networks that obey a given set of constraints, usually in form of graph measures. A much studied class of problems targets uniform sampling of simple graphs with given degree sequence or also with given degree correlations expressed in the form of a joint degree matrix. One approach is to use Markov chains based on edge switches (swaps) that preserve the constraints, are irreducible (ergodic) and fast mixing. In 1999, Kannan, Tet ali and Vempala (KTV) proposed a simple swap Markov chain for sampling graphs with given degree sequence and conjectured that it mixes rapidly (in poly-time) for arbitrary degree sequences. While the conjecture is still open, it was proven for special degree sequences, in particular, for those of undirected and directed regular simple graphs, of half-regular bipartite graphs, and of graphs with certain bounded maximum degrees. Here we prove the fast mixing KTV conjecture for novel, exponentially large classes of irregular degree sequences. Our method is based on a canonical decomposition of degree sequences into split graph degree sequences, a structural theorem for the space of graph realizations and on a factorization theorem for Markov chains. After introducing bipartite splitted degree sequences, we also generalize the canonical split graph decomposition for bipartite and directed graphs. We further develop the study of testing graph properties as initiated by Goldreich, Goldwasser and Ron. Loosely speaking, given an oracle access to a graph, we wish to distinguish the case when the graph has a pre-determined property from the case when it is far from having this property. Whereas they view graphs as represented by their adjacency matrix and measure the distance between graphs as a fraction of all possible vertex pairs, we view graphs as represented by bounded-length incidence lists and measure the distance between graphs as a fraction of the maximum possible number of edges. Thus, while the previous model is most appropriate for the study of dense graphs, our model is most appropriate for the study of bounded-degree graphs. In particular, we present randomized algorithms for testing whether an unknown bounded-degree graph is connected, k-connected (for k > 1), cycle-free and Eulerian. Our algorithms work in time polynomial in 1 e, always accept the graph when it has the tested property, and reject with high probability if the graph is s-far from having the property. For example, the 2-connectivity algorithm rejects (with high probability) any N-vertex d-degree graph for which more than edN edges need to be added in order to make the graph 2-edge-connected. In addition we prove lower bounds of Ω(√N) on the query complexity of testing algorithms for the bipartite and expander properties.