Fully-Dynamic Parallel Algorithms for Single-Linkage Clustering

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: De Man, Quinten, Dhulipala, Laxman, Gowda, Kishen N
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author De Man, Quinten
Dhulipala, Laxman
Gowda, Kishen N
author_facet De Man, Quinten
Dhulipala, Laxman
Gowda, Kishen N
contents Single-linkage clustering is a popular form of hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) where the distance between two clusters is defined as the minimum distance between any pair of points across the two clusters. In single-linkage HAC, the output is typically the single-linkage dendrogram (SLD), which is the binary tree representing the hierarchy of clusters formed by iteratively contracting the two closest clusters. In the dynamic setting, prior work has only studied maintaining a minimum spanning forest over the data since single-linkage HAC reduces to computing the SLD on the minimum spanning forest of the data. In this paper, we study the problem of maintaining the SLD in the fully-dynamic setting. We assume the input is a dynamic forest $F$ (representing the minimum spanning forest of the data) which receives a sequence of edge insertions and edge deletions. To our knowledge, no prior work has provided algorithms to update an SLD asymptotically faster than recomputing it from scratch. All of our update algorithms are asymptotically faster than the best known static SLD computation algorithm, which takes $O(n \log h)$ time where $h$ is the height of the dendrogram ($h \leq n-1$). Furthermore, our algorithms are much faster in many cases, such as when $h$ is low. Our first set of results are an insertion algorithm in $O(h)$ time and a deletion algorithm in $O(h \log (1+n/h))$ time. Next, we describe parallel and batch-parallel versions of these algorithms which are work-efficient or nearly work-efficient and have poly-logarithmic depth. Finally, we show how to perform insertions near-optimally in $O(c \log(1+n/c))$ time, where $c$ is the number of structural changes in the dendrogram caused by the update, and give a work-efficient parallel version of this algorithm that has polylogarithmic depth.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_18384
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fully-Dynamic Parallel Algorithms for Single-Linkage Clustering
De Man, Quinten
Dhulipala, Laxman
Gowda, Kishen N
Data Structures and Algorithms
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Single-linkage clustering is a popular form of hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) where the distance between two clusters is defined as the minimum distance between any pair of points across the two clusters. In single-linkage HAC, the output is typically the single-linkage dendrogram (SLD), which is the binary tree representing the hierarchy of clusters formed by iteratively contracting the two closest clusters. In the dynamic setting, prior work has only studied maintaining a minimum spanning forest over the data since single-linkage HAC reduces to computing the SLD on the minimum spanning forest of the data. In this paper, we study the problem of maintaining the SLD in the fully-dynamic setting. We assume the input is a dynamic forest $F$ (representing the minimum spanning forest of the data) which receives a sequence of edge insertions and edge deletions. To our knowledge, no prior work has provided algorithms to update an SLD asymptotically faster than recomputing it from scratch. All of our update algorithms are asymptotically faster than the best known static SLD computation algorithm, which takes $O(n \log h)$ time where $h$ is the height of the dendrogram ($h \leq n-1$). Furthermore, our algorithms are much faster in many cases, such as when $h$ is low. Our first set of results are an insertion algorithm in $O(h)$ time and a deletion algorithm in $O(h \log (1+n/h))$ time. Next, we describe parallel and batch-parallel versions of these algorithms which are work-efficient or nearly work-efficient and have poly-logarithmic depth. Finally, we show how to perform insertions near-optimally in $O(c \log(1+n/c))$ time, where $c$ is the number of structural changes in the dendrogram caused by the update, and give a work-efficient parallel version of this algorithm that has polylogarithmic depth.
title Fully-Dynamic Parallel Algorithms for Single-Linkage Clustering
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18384