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% \begin{figure}
% \includegraphics[scale=.4]{figures/ROC_curve.pdf}
% \caption{Precision-Recall curve Holme-Kim Model. 200 nodes, 16200 edges.}
% \end{figure}
% & \includegraphics[scale=.23]{figures/kronecker_l2_norm.pdf}
% & \includegraphics[scale=.23]{figures/kronecker_l2_norm_nonsparse.pdf}\\
\begin{table*}[t]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{l l l}
\hspace{-0.5em}\includegraphics[scale=.28]{figures/barabasi_albert.pdf}
& \hspace{-1em}\includegraphics[scale=.28]{figures/watts_strogatz.pdf}
& \hspace{-3em}\includegraphics[scale=.28]{figures/ROC_curve.pdf} \\
\hspace{-0.5em}(a) Barabasi-Albert (F$1$ \emph{vs.} $n$)
&\hspace{-1em} (b) Watts-Strogatz (F$1$ \emph{vs.} $n$)
&\hspace{-3em} (c) Holme-Kim (Prec-Recall) \\
\hspace{-0.5em}\includegraphics[scale=.28]{figures/kronecker_l2_norm.pdf}
& \hspace{-1em}\includegraphics[scale=.28]{figures/kronecker_l2_norm_nonsparse.pdf}
& \hspace{-3em}\includegraphics[scale=.28]{figures/watts_strogatz_p_init.pdf} \\
(d) Sparse Kronecker ($\ell_2$-norm \emph{vs.} $n$ ) & (e) Non-sparse Kronecker ($\ell_2$-norm \emph{vs.} $n$) & (f) Watts-Strogatz (F$1$ \emph{vs.} $p_{\text{init}}$)
\end{tabular}
\captionof{figure}{Figures (a) and (b) report the F$1$-score in $\log$ scale
for 2 graphs as a function of the number of cascades $m$: (a) Barabasi-Albert graph, $300$ nodes, $16200$ edges. (b)
Watts-Strogatz graph, $300$ nodes, $4500$ edges. Figure (c) plots the Precision-Recall curve for various values for $\lambda$ ofr a Holme-Kim graph ($200$ nodes, $9772$ edges). Figures (d) and (e) report the
$\ell_2$-norm $\|\hat \Theta - \Theta\|_2$ for a Kronecker graph which is: (d) exactly sparse (e) non-exactly sparse, as a function of the number of cascades $n$. Figure (f) plots the F$1$-score for the Watts-Strogatz graph as a function of $p_{init}$.}
\label{fig:four_figs}
\end{table*}
In this section, we validate empirically the results and assumptions of Section~\ref{sec:results} for for varying levels of sparsity and different initializations of parameters ($n$, $m$, $\lambda$, $p_{\text{init}}$), where $p_{\text{init}}$ is the initial probability of a node being a source node. We compare our algorithm to two different state-of-the-art algorithms: \textsc{greedy} and \textsc{mle} from \cite{Netrapalli:2012}. As an extra benchmark, we also introduce a new algorithm \textsc{lasso}, which approximates our \textsc{sparse mle} algorithm.
\paragraph{Experimental setup}
We evaluate the performance of the algorithms on synthetic graphs, chosen for their similarity to real social networks. We therefore consider a Watts-Strogatz graph ($300$ nodes, $4500$ edges) \cite{watts:1998}, a Barabasi-Albert graph ($300$ nodes, $16200$ edges) \cite{barabasi:2001}, a Holme-Kim power law graph ($200$ nodes, $9772$ edges) \cite{Holme:2002}, and the recently introduced Kronecker graph ($256$ nodes, $10000$ edges) \cite{Leskovec:2010}. Undirected graphs are converted to directed graphs by doubling the edges.
For every reported data point, we sample edge weights and generate $n$ cascades
from the (IC) model for $n \in \{100, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000\}$. We compare for each algorithm the estimated graph $\hat {\cal G}$ with ${\cal G}$. The initial probability of a node being a source is fixed to $0.05$, i.e. an average of $15$ nodes source nodes per cascades for all experiments, except for Figure~\label{fig:four_figs} (f). All edge weights are chosen uniformly in the interval $[0.2, 0.7]$, except when testing for approximately sparse graphs (see paragraph on robustness). Adjusting for the variance of our experiments, all data points are reported with at most a $\pm 1$ error margin. The parameter $\lambda$ is chosen to be of the order ${\cal O}(\sqrt{\log m / (\alpha n)})$.
\paragraph{Benchmarks}
We compare our \textsc{sparse mle} algorithm to 3 benchmarks: \textsc{greedy} and \textsc{mle} from \cite{Netrapalli:2012} and \textsc{lasso}. The \textsc{mle} algorithm is a maximum-likelihood estimator without $\ell1$-norm penalization. \textsc{greedy} is an iterative algorithm. We introduced the \textsc{lasso} algorithm in our experiments to achieve faster computation time:
$$\hat \theta_i \in \arg \min_{\theta} \sum_{t \in {\cal T}} |f(\theta_i\cdot x^t) - x_i^{t+1}|^2 + \lambda \|\theta_i\|_1$$
\textsc{Lasso} has the merit of being both easier and faster to optimize numerically than the other convex-optimization based algorithms. It approximates the $\textsc{sparse mle}$ algorithm by making the assumption that the observations $x_i^{t+1}$ are of the form: $x_i^{t+1} = f(\theta_i\cdot x^t) + \epsilon$, where $\epsilon$ is random white noise. This is not valid in theory since $\epsilon$ \emph{depends on} $f(\theta_i\cdot x^t)$, however the approximation is validated in practice.
We did not benchmark against other known algorithms (\textsc{netrate} \cite{gomezbalduzzi:2011} and \textsc{first edge} \cite{Abrahao:13}) due to the discrete time assumption. These algorithms also suppose a single-source model, whereas \textsc{sparse mle}, \textsc{mle}, and \textsc{greedy} do not. Learning the graph in the case of a multi-source cascade model is harder (see Figure~\ref{fig:four_figs} (f)) but more realistic, since we rarely have access to ``patient 0'' in practice.
\paragraph{Graph Estimation}
In the case of the \textsc{lasso}, \textsc{mle} and \textsc{sparse mle} algorithms, we construct the edges of $\hat {\cal G} : \cup_{j \in V} \{i : \Theta_{ij} > 0.1\}$, \emph{i.e} by thresholding. Finally, we report the F1-score$=2 \text{precision}\cdot\text{recall}/(\text{precision}+\text{recall})$, which considers the number of true edges recovered by the algorithm over the total number of edges returned by the algorithm (\emph{precision}) with the number of true edges recovered by the algorithm over the total number of edges it should have recovered (\emph{recall}).
Over all experiments, \textsc{sparse mle} achieves higher rates of precision,
recall, and F1-score. Interestingly, both \textsc{mle} and \textsc{sparse mle} perform exceptionally well on the Watts-Strogatz graph.
\begin{comment}
The recovery rate converges at
around $5000$ cascades, which is more than $15$ times the number of nodes. By
contrast, \textsc{sparse mle} achieves a reasonable F$1$-score of $.75$ for roughly $500$ observed cascades.
\end{comment}
\paragraph{Quantifying robustness}
The previous experiments only considered graphs with strong edges. To test the
algorithms in the approximately sparse case, we add sparse edges to the
previous graphs according to a bernoulli variable of parameter $1/3$ for every
non-edge, and drawing a weight uniformly from $[0,0.1]$. The non-sparse case is
compared to the sparse case in Figure~\ref{fig:four_figs} (d)--(e) for the $\ell_2$
norm showing that both the \textsc{lasso}, followed by \textsc{sparse mle} are
the most robust to noise.
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