Model-Based Learning of Latent Euclidean Embedding from Relational Data

Abstract

Visualizing and interpreting the dependence structure in relational data often benefits from geometric representations via low-dimensional Euclidean embeddings. However, existing approaches are typically restricted to specific response types, rely on burdensome high-dimensional nonconvex optimization, or lack uniform theoretical guarantees for simultaneous coordinate recovery. To address these limitations, we introduce a unified, distance-based latent space framework for both unipartite and bipartite relational data---accommodating continuous, binary, ordinal, and count-valued observations---via a modular two-stage procedure that decouples signal estimation from geometric recovery. First, we estimate the low-rank signal matrix using spectral denoising. For models with nonlinear link functions, we further apply one-step row- and column-wise refinement to achieve uniform entrywise accuracy. Second, we recover the latent configurations through direct spectral analysis for unipartite data and a low-dimensional alignment optimization for bipartite data. We establish uniform recovery guarantees that characterize the propagation of error from signal estimation to the embedding space. To illustrate the scalability and interpretability of our approach, we apply the proposed method to two real-world datasets: a statistician citation network and European Parliament voting records.