# Measure of Node Similarity in Multilayer Networks

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.00715 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00715/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jun 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Role Similarity Metric Based on Spanning Rooted Forest](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07872/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The weight of links in a network is often related to the similarity of the nodes. Here, we introduce a simple tunable measure for analysing the similarity of nodes across different link weights. In particular, we use the measure to analyze homophily in a group of 659 freshman students at a large university. Our analysis is based on data obtained using smartphones equipped with custom data collection software, complemented by questionnaire-based data. The network of social contacts is represented as a weighted multilayer network constructed from different channels of telecommunication as well as data on face-to-face contacts. We find that even strongly connected individuals are not more similar with respect to basic personality traits than randomly chosen pairs of individuals. In contrast, several socio-demographics variables have a significant degree of similarity. We further observe that similarity might be present in one layer of the multilayer network and simultaneously be absent in the other layers. For a variable such as gender, our measure reveals a transition from similarity between nodes connected with links of relatively low weight to dis-similarity for the nodes connected by the strongest links. We finally analyze the overlap between layers in the network for different levels of acquaintanceships.