Link prediction in complex networks has attracted increasing attention from both physical and computer science communities. The algorithms can be used to extract missing information, identify spurious interactions, evaluate network evolving mechanisms, and so on. This article summaries recent progress about link prediction algorithms, emphasizing on the contributions from physical perspectives and approaches, such as the random-walk-based methods and the maximum likelihood methods. We also introduce three typical applications: reconstruction of networks, evaluation of network evolving mechanism and classification of partially labelled networks. Finally, we introduce some applications and outline future challenges of link prediction algorithms.
Link prediction approaches can be classified into three categories: similarity-based methods, maximum likelihood approaches, and probabilistic methods REF .
Link Prediction in Complex Networks: A Survey
Physica A 390 (2011) 1150-1170
Mathematics Physics Computer Science