Optimal Bayesian estimation in stochastic block models

Optimal Bayesian estimation in stochastic block models Debdeep Pati, Anirban Bhattacharya: With the advent of structured data in the form of social networks, genetic circuits and protein interaction networks, statistical analysis of networks has gained popularity over recent years. Stochastic block model constitutes a classical cluster-exhibiting random graph model for networks. There is a substantial amount of literature devoted to proposing strategies for estimating and inferring parameters of the model, both from classical and Bayesian viewpoints. Unlike the classical counterpart, there is however a dearth of theoretical results on the accuracy of estimation in the Bayesian setting. In this article, the authors undertake a theoretical investigation of the posterior distribution of the parameters in a stochastic block model. In particular, they show that one obtains optimal rates of posterior convergence with routinely used multinomial-Dirichlet priors on cluster indicators and uniform priors on the probabilities of the random edge indicators. En route, they also develop geometric embedding techniques to exploit the lower dimensional structure of the parameter space which may be of independent interest.