Performance bounds are given for exploratory co-clustering blockmodeling of bipartite graph data, where we assume the rows and columns of the data matrix are samples from an arbitrary population. This is equivalent to assuming that the data is generated from a nonsmooth graphon. It is shown that co-clusters found by any method can be extended to the row and column populations, or equivalently that the estimated blockmodel approximates a blocked version of the generative graphon, with estimation error bounded by @math . Analogous performance bounds are also given for degree-corrected blockmodels and random dot product graphs, with error rates depending on the dimensionality of the latent variable space.
This article establishes the performance of stochastic blockmodels in addressing the co-clustering problem of partitioning a binary array into subsets, assuming only that the data are generated by a nonparametric process satisfying the condition of separate exchangeability. We provide oracle inequalities with rate of convergence @math corresponding to profile likelihood maximization and mean-square error minimization, and show that the blockmodel can be interpreted in this setting as an optimal piecewise-constant approximation to the generative nonparametric model. We also show for large sample sizes that the detection of co-clusters in such data indicates with high probability the existence of co-clusters of equal size and asymptotically equivalent connectivity in the underlying generative process.