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Main Authors: He, Xi, Little, Max A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.12237
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author He, Xi
Little, Max A.
author_facet He, Xi
Little, Max A.
contents The $K$-medoids problem is a challenging combinatorial clustering task, widely used in data analysis applications. While numerous algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem, none of these are able to obtain an exact (globally optimal) solution for the problem in polynomial time. In this paper, we present EKM: a novel algorithm for solving this problem exactly with worst-case $O\left(N^{K+1}\right)$ time complexity. EKM is developed according to recent advances in transformational programming and combinatorial generation, using formal program derivation steps. The derived algorithm is provably correct by construction. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm by comparing it against various approximate methods on numerous real-world datasets. We show that the wall-clock run time of our algorithm matches the worst-case time complexity analysis on synthetic datasets, clearly outperforming the exponential time complexity of benchmark branch-and-bound based MIP solvers. To our knowledge, this is the first, rigorously-proven polynomial time, practical algorithm for this ubiquitous problem.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_12237
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EKM: An exact, polynomial-time algorithm for the $K$-medoids problem
He, Xi
Little, Max A.
Machine Learning
Computation
The $K$-medoids problem is a challenging combinatorial clustering task, widely used in data analysis applications. While numerous algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem, none of these are able to obtain an exact (globally optimal) solution for the problem in polynomial time. In this paper, we present EKM: a novel algorithm for solving this problem exactly with worst-case $O\left(N^{K+1}\right)$ time complexity. EKM is developed according to recent advances in transformational programming and combinatorial generation, using formal program derivation steps. The derived algorithm is provably correct by construction. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm by comparing it against various approximate methods on numerous real-world datasets. We show that the wall-clock run time of our algorithm matches the worst-case time complexity analysis on synthetic datasets, clearly outperforming the exponential time complexity of benchmark branch-and-bound based MIP solvers. To our knowledge, this is the first, rigorously-proven polynomial time, practical algorithm for this ubiquitous problem.
title EKM: An exact, polynomial-time algorithm for the $K$-medoids problem
topic Machine Learning
Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.12237