Sylvester Tensor Equation for Multi-Way Association

How can we identify the same or similar users from a collection of social network platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)? Which restaurant shall we recommend to a given user at the right time at the right location? Given a disease, which genes and drugs are most relevant? Multi-way association, which identifies strongly correlated node sets from multiple input networks, is the key to answering these questions. Despite its importance, very few multi-way association methods exist due to its high complexity. In this paper, we formulate multi-way association as a convex optimization problem, whose optimal solution can be obtained by a Sylvester tensor equation. Furthermore, we propose two fast algorithms to solve the Sylvester tensor equation, with a linear time and space complexity. We further provide theoretic analysis in terms of the sensitivity of the Sylvester tensor equation solution. Empirical evaluations demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method.