help > Issue with the 'Explore variable threshold range' tool for graph theory
Aug 25, 2026  06:08 PM | Nicolas Deom
Issue with the 'Explore variable threshold range' tool for graph theory

Hi all,


I believe there is an issue in the code of the conn_network.m function which calculates and plots global efficiency and local efficiency at different threshold ranges and compares with a lattice and random network to help with the decision of picking a cost threshold. I think that the numbers are correct for the first two plots, the problem is in the last one, which shows the optimization for small-world network properties. In the script for the conn_network function, on lines 136 to 138, where the values seem to be calculated for this plot, lines 136 and 137 both use the variable 'mnet_d' which has its value set to local efficiency data at the end of the previous loop (lines 112 to 134). This means that the graph actually plots LE_{data}-GE_{lattice}+LE_{data}-LE_{random} instead of the intended GE_{data}-GE_{lattice}+LE_{data}-LE_{random}. Looking at the numbers from my data seems to confirm this when trying to manually calculate the values in the graph: using the expected formula does not exactly align, while the unintended formula does.


In light of this, I have two questions:



  1. Am I reading and understanding the script correctly? Is there indeed an error there?
  2. What are the implications for work carried out that used a threshold range based on the incorrect formula? Has it been optimized for a basically meaningless value and is therefore uninterpretable, particularly if the threshold selected based on the two versions of the formula widely differ?

Thanks for your help!


Nic

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TitleAuthorDate
Issue with the 'Explore variable threshold range' tool for graph theory
Nicolas Deom Aug 25, 2026
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon Sep 1, 2026
Alfonso Nieto-Castanon Sep 2, 2026
Nicolas Deom Sep 2, 2026