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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ye, Patrick Peixuan, Shani, Chen, Vitercik, Ellen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07182
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author Ye, Patrick Peixuan
Shani, Chen
Vitercik, Ellen
author_facet Ye, Patrick Peixuan
Shani, Chen
Vitercik, Ellen
contents We introduce Bridged Clustering, a semi-supervised framework to learn predictors from any unpaired input $X$ and output $Y$ dataset. Our method first clusters $X$ and $Y$ independently, then learns a sparse, interpretable bridge between clusters using only a few paired examples. At inference, a new input $x$ is assigned to its nearest input cluster, and the centroid of the linked output cluster is returned as the prediction $\hat{y}$. Unlike traditional SSL, Bridged Clustering explicitly leverages output-only data, and unlike dense transport-based methods, it maintains a sparse and interpretable alignment. Through theoretical analysis, we show that with bounded mis-clustering and mis-bridging rates, our algorithm becomes an effective and efficient predictor. Empirically, our method is competitive with SOTA methods while remaining simple, model-agnostic, and highly label-efficient in low-supervision settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_07182
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bridged Clustering: Semi-Supervised Sparse Bridging
Ye, Patrick Peixuan
Shani, Chen
Vitercik, Ellen
Machine Learning
We introduce Bridged Clustering, a semi-supervised framework to learn predictors from any unpaired input $X$ and output $Y$ dataset. Our method first clusters $X$ and $Y$ independently, then learns a sparse, interpretable bridge between clusters using only a few paired examples. At inference, a new input $x$ is assigned to its nearest input cluster, and the centroid of the linked output cluster is returned as the prediction $\hat{y}$. Unlike traditional SSL, Bridged Clustering explicitly leverages output-only data, and unlike dense transport-based methods, it maintains a sparse and interpretable alignment. Through theoretical analysis, we show that with bounded mis-clustering and mis-bridging rates, our algorithm becomes an effective and efficient predictor. Empirically, our method is competitive with SOTA methods while remaining simple, model-agnostic, and highly label-efficient in low-supervision settings.
title Bridged Clustering: Semi-Supervised Sparse Bridging
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07182