Link prediction

<p>In <a href="/facts/Network_theory/m6CQovwm">network theory</a>, link prediction is the problem of predicting the existence of a link between two entities in a network. Examples of link prediction include predicting friendship links among users in a <a href="/facts/Social_network/kQg6aEVf">social network</a>, predicting co-authorship links in a <a href="/facts/Citation_network/Ps8u3uFD">citation network</a>, and predicting interactions between genes and proteins in a <a href="/facts/Biological_network/HonxLhWT">biological network</a>. Link prediction can also have a temporal aspect, where, given a snapshot of the set of links at time 
  
    
      
        t
      
    
    {\displaystyle t}
  
, the goal is to predict the links at time 
  
    
      
        t
        +
        1
      
    
    {\displaystyle t+1}
  
.
Link prediction is widely applicable. In e-commerce, link prediction is often a subtask for recommending items to users. In the curation of citation databases, it can be used for record deduplication. In bioinformatics, it has been used to predict <a href="/facts/Protein-protein_interactions/etvm9Wmg">protein-protein interactions</a> (PPI). It is also used to identify hidden groups of terrorists and criminals in security related applications.
</p>

Link prediction open-in-new

Link prediction