Patent Document ID: 9292884
Application ID: 13939093

Base Claim:
1. A method comprising, by one or more processors associated with one or more computing devices: accessing a social graph comprising a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges connecting the nodes, each of the edges between two of the nodes representing a single degree of separation between them, the plurality of nodes corresponding to a plurality of users associated with an online social network, respectively; identifying a plurality of non-overlapping clusters in the social graph using graph clustering, each cluster comprising a discrete set of nodes from the plurality of nodes; providing a treatment to at least a first set of users and a second set of users, the first and second sets of users corresponding to a first set of clusters and a second set of clusters of the plurality of clusters, respectively, the first set of clusters being discrete from the second set of clusters; and determining, for each of at least the first and second sets of users, a treatment effect of the treatment on the users of the set of users based on a network exposure to the treatment for each user, wherein, for each respective cluster, the network exposure of the nodes in the cluster is absolute k-neighborhood exposure, absolute k-core exposure, fractional q-neighborhood exposure, or fractional q-core exposure.

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Claim 15:
15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the determined treatment effect of the treatment on the users in a particular cluster is an average treatment effect, τ, wherein τ ⁡ ( z → = 1 → , z → ′ = 0 ⇀ ) = 1 n ⁢ ∑ i = 1 n ⁢ ⌈ Y 1 ⁡ ( z → = 1 → ) - Y i ⁡ ( z → = 0 ⇀ ) ⌉ , and wherein: {right arrow over (z)}={right arrow over (1)} represents a user in the treatment group; {right arrow over (z)}′={right arrow over (o)} represents a user in the control group; n is a number of nodes in the particular cluster; and Y i ({right arrow over (z)}) is the potential outcome of user i under the treatment assignment vector {right arrow over (z)}.