Walking forward and backward: towards graph-based searching and mining

"Graphs are powerful vehicles to represent data objects that are interconnecting or interacting with each other. We explore random walks on various kinds of graph to address different searching and mining scenarios. This dissertation focuses on two symmetric forms of random walk called the forward walk and backward walk, which can be applied to enrich three key tasks in searching and mining, namely, extraction, ranking and classification, in novel ways. More specifically, we enhance extraction with the metrics of probabilistic precision and recall, ranking with the senses of importance and specificity, and classification with heterogeneous contexts in terms of relationship type and confidence level. We further study the underpinning principle of random walks on a graph, which is often known as the smoothness assumption. We argue that smoothness is a pointwise property and requires probabilistic modeling. Thus, we propose a new framework to define pointwise smoothness probabilistically on a graph, which unifies two different ""modes"" of smoothness corresponding to the forward and backward random walks, respectively. Finally, our graph-based random walk solutions have consistently demonstrated promising empirical results for a wide range of searching and mining applications."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Fang, Yuan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Chang, Kevin C.
• Han, Jiawei
• Zhai, ChengXiang
• Krishnaswamy, Shonali

• Graph
• searching and mining
• random walk
• semi-supervised learning
• smoothness

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2014 Yuan Fang

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/72873

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/72873