The Why and How of Convex Clustering

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Chi, Eric C., Molstad, Aaron J., Gao, Zheming, Chi, Jocelyn T.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Chi, Eric C.
Molstad, Aaron J.
Gao, Zheming
Chi, Jocelyn T.
author_facet Chi, Eric C.
Molstad, Aaron J.
Gao, Zheming
Chi, Jocelyn T.
contents This survey reviews a clustering method based on solving a convex optimization problem. Despite the plethora of existing clustering methods, convex clustering has several uncommon features that distinguish it from prior art. The optimization problem is free of spurious local minima, and its unique global minimizer is stable with respect to all its inputs, including the data, a tuning parameter, and weight hyperparameters. Its single tuning parameter controls the number of clusters and can be chosen using standard techniques from penalized regression. We give intuition into the behavior and theory for convex clustering as well as practical guidance. We highlight important algorithms and discuss how their computational costs scale with the problem size. Finally, we highlight the breadth of its uses and flexibility to be combined and integrated with other inferential methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_09077
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Why and How of Convex Clustering
Chi, Eric C.
Molstad, Aaron J.
Gao, Zheming
Chi, Jocelyn T.
Methodology
Machine Learning
This survey reviews a clustering method based on solving a convex optimization problem. Despite the plethora of existing clustering methods, convex clustering has several uncommon features that distinguish it from prior art. The optimization problem is free of spurious local minima, and its unique global minimizer is stable with respect to all its inputs, including the data, a tuning parameter, and weight hyperparameters. Its single tuning parameter controls the number of clusters and can be chosen using standard techniques from penalized regression. We give intuition into the behavior and theory for convex clustering as well as practical guidance. We highlight important algorithms and discuss how their computational costs scale with the problem size. Finally, we highlight the breadth of its uses and flexibility to be combined and integrated with other inferential methods.
title The Why and How of Convex Clustering
topic Methodology
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09077