Counting communities in weighted Stochastic Block Models via semidefinite programming (2502.15891v1)

Abstract: We consider the problem of estimating the number of communities in a weighted balanced Stochastic Block Model. We construct hypothesis tests based on semidefinite programming and with a statistic coming from a GOE matrix to distinguish between any two candidate numbers of communities. This is possible due to a universality result for a semidefinite programming-based function that we also prove. The tests are then used to form a sequential test to estimate the number of communities. Furthermore, we also construct estimators of the communities themselves.