The document discusses Bayesian statistical inference for characterizing the structure of large networks. It introduces stochastic blockmodels as a generative model for network structure and describes performing Bayesian inference on these models. This involves defining a likelihood function based on a stochastic blockmodel, placing prior distributions on the model parameters, and computing the posterior distribution over partitions using Bayes' rule. Statistical inference provides a principled means of inferring community structure without overfitting and enables model selection among different partitions. Examples analyzing real networks demonstrate its ability to uncover meaningful structure.