Evaluation of Graph Sampling: A Visualization Perspective

Graph sampling is frequently used to address scalability issues when analyzing large graphs. Many algorithms have been proposed to sample graphs, and the performance of these algorithms has been quantified through metrics based on graph structural properties preserved by the sampling: degree distribution, clustering coefficient, and others. However, a perspective that is missing is the impact of these sampling strategies on the resultant visualizations. In this paper, we present the results of three user studies that investigate how sampling strategies influence node-link visualizations of graphs. In particular, five sampling strategies widely used in the graph mining literature are tested to determine how well they preserve visual features in node-link diagrams. Our results show that depending on the sampling strategy used different visual features are preserved. These results provide a complimentary view to metric evaluations conducted in the graph mining literature and provide an impetus to conduct future visualization studies.