METHOD AND APPARATUS OF MACHINE LEARNING USING A NETWORK WITH SOFTWARE AGENTS AT THE NETWORK NODES AND THEN RANKING NETWORK NODES

摘要

An apparatus and method are provided for rapidly ranking network nodes according to input ranking criteria. The links (i.e., first-order paths) between nodes are expressed in a first-order path matrix, which is used to generate nth-order path matrices as nth powers of the first-order path matrix and summed as a power series to generate a surrogate ranking operator (SRO) representing as a single matrix operation a sum over paths of all orders. Thus, in contrast to conventional ranking methods that require multiple recursive steps to account for the interrelatedness of linked nodes, a ranking is produced by multiplying the SRO by a state vector representing the input ranking criteria.