On 20 Feb 2020, at 11:30, Tiago de Paula Peixoto <tiago@skewed.de> wrote:
If you do this kind of comparison, the NSBM approach will virtually always produce results with a smaller description length, since it is designed to minimize this quantity.
I've tested myself and this is the case (many orders of magnitudes). Anecdotical fact on my data: the modularity found by Leiden and the one at a hierarchy level of NSBM with comparable number of communities are not that different.
If you want to determine the usefulness of modularity maximization in a particular context, there is a simple test you can do: Just randomize the data, keeping the same degree sequence, and run the algorithm again. Almost always it will find many "communities" which are completely meaningless as explanations of the data. This should be enough to convince serious researchers that this approach is unreliable.
I need a DOI for this conversation as I would cite the last sentence whenever I'll write the paper :-) Thank you d