×

Community detection using spectral clustering on sparse geosocial data. (English) Zbl 1348.62268

Summary: In this article we identify social communities among gang members in the Hollenbeck policing district in Los Angeles, based on sparse observations of a combination of social interactions and geographic locations of the individuals. This information, coming from Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Field Interview cards, is used to construct a similarity graph for the individuals. We use spectral clustering to identify clusters in the graph, corresponding to communities in Hollenbeck, and compare these with the LAPD’s knowledge of the individuals’ gang membership. We discuss different ways of encoding the geosocial information using a graph structure and the influence on the resulting clusterings. Finally we analyze the robustness of this technique with respect to noisy and incomplete data, thereby providing suggestions about the relative importance of quantity versus quality of collected data.

MSC:

62P25 Applications of statistics to social sciences
91C20 Clustering in the social and behavioral sciences
91D30 Social networks; opinion dynamics
62H30 Classification and discrimination; cluster analysis (statistical aspects)

Software:

GenLouvain