A workshop on algorithmic and statistical approaches for large social network data sets will take place on December 7, 2012 at Lake Tahoe, Nevada alongside NIPS.

The Workshop Schedule is now posted. The workshop will take place in Harrah's hotel, in the "Fallen Leaf + Marla Bay" conference room.

The workshop will consist of a combination of invited speakers and contributed talks and posters, with ample time allowed for open discussion.

Overview

Statistical models for social networks struggle with the tension between scalability — the ability to effectively and efficiently model networks with large numbers of nodes — and fidelity to social processes. Recent developments within the field have sought to address these issues in various ways, including algorithmic innovations, use of scalable latent variable models, and clever use of covariate information. This workshop provides both a forum for presenting new innovations in this area, and a venue for debating the tradeoffs involved in differing approaches to social network modeling. The workshop will consist of a combination of invited speakers and contributed talks and posters, with ample time allowed for open discussion.

The workshop will be of interest to researchers working on either or both of the following two aspects of large social network data sets:

1. the development of new statistical and machine learning theories and algorithms for such data;
2. computational aspects of exploratory data analysis and statistical modeling of such data.

We also welcome submissions of specific case studies and applications involving large social network data sets, in particular if they provide insight on computational and statistical issues.

Attendance is open to all those interested, provided they register for the NIPS workshops.

Please direct any questions to network.workshop.nips.2012@gmail.com.