Distance Measures for Unweighted Undirected Networks: A Comparison Study

ABSTRACT Networks are mathematical structures that allow the representation of complex systems by jointly modelling the elements of the system and the relationships that exist among them. To analyse different contexts or systems, methodological tools are necessary to allow for the quantitative estimation of the differences existing between two or more networks. For this purpose, various tools have been proposed in the literature. This study is an exploratory analysis of the impacts that different methods (distances and spectral methods) have on the comparative evaluation of two networks. The analyses were conducted through a simulation study that considered three different perturbation schemes to investigate the behaviour of each method with increasing randomness in the perturbation scheme (i.e., edge removal). Results show that the distances between adjacency matrices are sensitive only to changes in the network density, while spectral methods are sensitive to changes in both the network density and the degree of the nodes.