Prediction and Modularity in Dynamical Systems
This work provides a new framework for modularity detection in complex dynamical networks, relevant to researchers studying system organization and prediction.
The authors introduce a method for identifying modular structures in dynamical systems by balancing model simplicity and predictive accuracy, enabling optimal multiscale decompositions into weakly-coupled modules. The approach is demonstrated with state-dependent and causal extensions.
Identifying and understanding modular organizations is centrally important in the study of complex systems. Several approaches to this problem have been advanced, many framed in information-theoretic terms. Our treatment starts from the complementary point of view of statistical modeling and prediction of dynamical systems. It is known that for finite amounts of training data, simpler models can have greater predictive power than more complex ones. We use the trade-off between model simplicity and predictive accuracy to generate optimal multiscale decompositions of dynamical networks into weakly-coupled, simple modules. State-dependent and causal versions of our method are also proposed.