SteinGen: Generating Fidelitous and Diverse Graph Samples

Abstract

Generating graphs that preserve characteristic structures while promoting sample diversity can be challenging, especially when the number of graph observations is small. Here, we tackle the problem of graph generation from only one observed graph. The classical approach of graph generation from parametric models relies on the estimation of parameters, which can be inconsistent or expensive to compute due to intractable normalisation constants. Generative modelling based on machine learning techniques to generate high-quality graph samples avoids parameter estimation but usually requires abundant training samples. Our proposed generating procedure, SteinGen, which is phrased in the setting of graphs as realisations of exponential random graph models, combines ideas from Stein's method and MCMC by employing Markovian dynamics which are based on a Stein operator for the target model. SteinGen uses the Glauber dynamics associated with an estimated Stein operator to generate a sample, and re-estimates the Stein operator from the sample after every sampling step. We show that on a class of exponential random graph models this novel "estimation and re-estimation" generation strategy yields high distributional similarity (high fidelity) to the original data, combined with high sample diversity.