A General Pairwise Comparison Model for Extremely Sparse Networks

Statistical inference using pairwise comparison data has been an effective approach to analyzing complex and sparse networks. In this paper we propose a general framework for modeling the mutual interaction in a probabilistic network, which enjoys ample flexibility in terms of parametrization. Within this set-up, we establish that the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) for the latent scores of the subjects is uniformly consistent under a near-minimal condition on network sparsity. This condition is sharp in terms of the leading order asymptotics describing the sparsity. The proof utilizes a novel chaining technique based on the error-induced metric as well as careful counting of comparison graph structures. Our results guarantee that the MLE is a valid estimator for inference in large-scale comparison networks where data is asymptotically deficient. Numerical simulations are provided to complement the theoretical analysis.