Applied Modeling Techniques and Data Analysis 1

7 Diagnostics and Visualization of Point Process Models for Event Times on a Social Network

Point process models have been used to analyze interaction event times on a social network, in the hope to provide valuable insights for social science research. However, the diagnostics and visualization of the modeling results from such an analysis have received limited discussion in the literature. In this chapter, we develop a systematic set of diagnostic tools and visualizations for point process models fitted to data from a network setting. We analyze the residual process and Pearson residual on the network by inspecting their structure and clustering structure. Equipped with these tools, we can validate whether a model adequately captures the temporal and/or network structures in the observed data. The utility of our approach is demonstrated using simulation studies and point process models applied to a study of social interactions between animals.

7.1. Introduction

Interaction event times observed on a social network provide valuable information for social scientists to gain insight into the dynamics and dependence structure among actors on this network. Williamson et al. (2016) studied the social interaction patterns of group-housed male mice over long time periods. In Figure 7.1(a), we plot the univariate event times from one pair of mice, which show irregular event-intense intervals and heterogeneity in event densities. Figure 7.1(b) displays the observed social interactions ...