Network-based naive Bayes model for social network

Naive Bayes(NB) is one of the most popular classification methods. It is particularly useful when the dimension of the predictor is high and data are generated independently. In the meanwhile, social network data are becoming increasingly accessible, due to the fast development of various social network services and websites. By contrast, data generated by a social network are most likely to be dependent. The dependency is mainly determined by their social network relationships. Then, how to extend the classical NB method to social network data becomes a problem of great interest. To this end, we propose here a network-based naive Bayes(NNB) method, which generalizes the classical NB model to social network data. The key advantage of the NNB method is that it takes the network relationships into consideration. The computational efficiency makes the NNB method even feasible in large scale social networks. The statistical properties of the NNB model are theoretically investigated. Simulation studies have been conducted to demonstrate its finite sample performance.A real data example is also analyzed for illustration purpose.