13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising: forming a covariance matrix Σ from the scaled values {acute over (x)} i,j for the plurality of descriptive attributes j; and finding a set of eigenvectors for the covariance matrix Σ and a corresponding set of eigenvalues.
13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising: forming a covariance matrix Σ from the scaled values {acute over (x)} i,j for the plurality of descriptive attributes j; and finding a set of eigenvectors for the covariance matrix Σ and a corresponding set of eigenvalues. 14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising: processing the original values x i,j for the descriptive attributes j of the first edge i 1 in an alternate space using the eigenvectors from the covariance matrix Σ to form a corresponding plurality of projected vectors for the first edge i 1 ; multiplying each projected vector from the plurality of projected vectors for the first edge i 1 by the corresponding eigenvalue from the covariance matrix to form a plurality of tie attribute components S i 1 j 1 . . . n for the first edge i 1 ; and summing the plurality of tie attribute components S i 1 j 1 . . . n to obtain a normalized composite tie metric S i 1 for the first edge i 1 .