Node Embeddings and Graph Learning Tasks
Before diving into how graph neural networks work, it's worth being precise about what they produce and what problems they solve. The output is embeddings — vectors that place each node (or edge, or whole graph) in a meaningful space — and the problems come in three flavors that cover almost every graph application. Getting this vocabulary straight makes the architectures in the rest of the series click into place.
A GNN produces embeddings that fuse what a node is (features) with where it sits (structure), and graph problems come in three levels: node-level (classification), edge-level (link prediction — recommendation, knowledge-graph completion), and graph-level (molecule classification). Plus the decisive transductive vs inductive distinction.