RoleSim: Scaling axiomatic role-based similarity ranking on large graphs

RoleSim and SimRank are among the popular graph-theoretic similarity measures with many applications in, e.g., web search, collaborative filtering, and sociometry. While RoleSim addresses the automorphic (role) equivalence of pairwise similarity which SimRank lacks, it ignores the neighboring similarity information out of the automorphically equivalent set. Consequently, two pairs of nodes, which are not automorphically equivalent by nature, cannot be well distinguished by RoleSim if the averages of their neighboring similarities over the automorphically equivalent set are the same. To alleviate this problem: 1) We propose a novel similarity model, namely RoleSim*, which accurately evaluates pairwise role similarities in a more comprehensive manner. RoleSim* not only guarantees the automorphic equivalence that SimRank lacks, but also takes into account the neighboring similarity information outside the automorphically equivalent sets that are overlooked by RoleSim. 2) We prove the existence and uniqueness of the RoleSim* solution, and show its three axiomatic properties ( i.e., symmetry, boundedness, and non-increasing monotonicity). 3) We provide a concise bound for iteratively computing RoleSim* formula, and estimate the number of iterations required to attain a desired accuracy. 4) We induce a distance metric based on RoleSim* similarity, and show that the RoleSim* metric fulfills the triangular inequality, which implies the sum-transitivity of its similarity scores. 5) We present a threshold-based RoleSim* model that reduces the computational time further with provable accuracy guarantee. 6) We propose a single-source RoleSim* model, which scales well for sizable graphs. 7) We also devise methods to scale RoleSim* based search by incorporating its triangular inequality property with partitioning techniques. Our experimental results on real datasets demonstrate that RoleSim* achieves higher accuracy than its competitors while scaling well on sizable graphs with billions of edges.