Patent Document ID: 20150331932
Application ID: 14709601
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A computer-program product tangibly embodied in a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium, the computer-program product including instructions operable to cause a computing device to perform operations including: receive an indication of a specified variable for which each node of a network is associated with a value; receive an indication of one or more specified criteria to select a final clustered representation of the network, the one or more specified criteria comprising a maximum degree of loss of information concerning the specified variable associated with the final clustered representation; and operations of an iteration of derivation of the final clustered representation, wherein the operations of the iteration comprise: calculating a degree of loss of information concerning the specified variable arising from each possible combination of two linked nodes of multiple nodes of a current clustered representation of the network into a single node to generate a next clustered representation of the network, wherein each node of the clustered representation represents at least one node of the network; selecting one of the possible combinations of two linked nodes of the current clustered representation that is associated with a smallest degree of loss of information concerning the specified variable to combine into a single node; determining whether to cease performance of iterations based on whether the smallest degree of loss associated with the selected combination exceeds the maximum degree of loss of information; effecting the selected combination of two linked nodes of the current clustered representation to generate the next clustered representation in response to a determination that the smallest degree of loss does not exceed the maximum degree of loss; and selecting the current clustered representation as the final clustered representation in response to a determination that the smallest degree of loss exceeds the maximum degree of loss.