The R Journal: article published in 2018, volume 10:2

Snowboot: Bootstrap Methods for Network Inference
Yuzhou Chen, Yulia R. Gel, Vyacheslav Lyubchich and Kusha Nezafati , The R Journal (2018) 10:2, pages 95-113.

Abstract Complex networks are used to describe a broad range of disparate social systems and natural phenomena, from power grids to customer segmentation to human brain connectome. Challenges of parametric model specification and validation inspire a search for more data-driven and flexible nonparametric approaches for inference of complex networks. In this paper we discuss methodology and R implementation of two bootstrap procedures on random networks, that is, patchwork bootstrap of Thompson et al. (2016) and Gel et al. (2017) and vertex bootstrap of Snijders and Borgatti (1999). To our knowledge, the new R package snowboot is the first implementation of the vertex and patchwork bootstrap inference on networks in R. Our new package is accompanied with a detailed user’s manual, and is compatible with the popular R package on network studies igraph. We evaluate the patchwork bootstrap and vertex bootstrap with extensive simulation studies and illustrate their utility in an application to analysis of real world networks.

Received: 2017-08-11; online 2018-12-08, supplementary material, (8.9 KiB)
CRAN packages: snowboot, bootnet, sna, graphics, igraph, parallel, Rcpp, Rdpack, stats, VGAM
CRAN Task Views implied by cited CRAN packages: Optimization, SocialSciences, Bayesian, Distributions, Econometrics, Environmetrics, ExtremeValue, gR, Graphics, HighPerformanceComputing, Multivariate, NumericalMathematics, Psychometrics, Spatial, Survival

This article and supplementary materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

@article{RJ-2018-056,
  author = {Yuzhou Chen and Yulia R. Gel and Vyacheslav Lyubchich and
          Kusha Nezafati},
  title = {{Snowboot: Bootstrap Methods for Network Inference}},
  year = {2018},
  journal = {{The R Journal}},
  doi = {10.32614/RJ-2018-056},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-056},
  pages = {95--113},
  volume = {10},
  number = {2}
}