A test-bed for generating social graphs and recommending named groups from email

Abstract

Named groups are persistent groups of contacts with whom a user may wish to share the same information. We have engineered a test-bed for evaluating algorithms that recommend such groups. It assumes that these algorithms first generate social graphs from email logs and then mine these graphs to recommend the lists. It supports a variety of mechanisms to gather user data to support users with different privacy needs. It can be attached to a variety of algorithms for mining the data collected. It accommodates different kinds of models for using named groups and offers an evaluation mechanism that requires no effort from the user. The test-bed also provides visualizations of the generated social graphs and generated lists. Thus, it frees algorithm designers from gathering data and evaluating and understanding the output. It has been used to evaluate and compare multiple algorithms for recommending contact groups.