Inferring a Drive-Response Network from Time Series of Topological Measures in Complex Networks with Transfer Entropy

Topological measures are crucial to describe, classify and understand complex networks. Lots of measures are proposed to characterize specific features of specific networks, but the relationships among these measures remain unclear. Taking into account that pulling networks from different domains together for statistical analysis might provide incorrect conclusions, we conduct our investigation with data observed from the same network in the form of simultaneously measured time series. We synthesize a transfer entropy-based framework to quantify the relationships among topological measures, and then to provide a holistic scenario of these measures by inferring a drive-response network. Techniques from Symbolic Transfer Entropy, Effective Transfer Entropy, and Partial Transfer Entropy are synthesized to deal with challenges such as time series being nonstationary, finite sample effects and indirect effects. We resort to kernel density estimation to assess significance of the results based on surrogate data. The framework is applied to study 20 measures across 2779 records in the Technology Exchange Network, and the results are consistent with some existing knowledge. With the drive-response network, we evaluate the influence of each measure by calculating its strength, and cluster them into three classes, i.e., driving measures, responding measures and standalone measures, according to the network communities.