arXiv:2604. 23628v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Hierarchical clustering is a fundamental task in data analysis, but classical methods have long lacked a principled objective function.
arXiv:2607. 13217v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Consider the following variation on the Hierarchical Clustering problem: Usually, while building a hierarchical clustering, one recursively partitions the data until each cluster becomes a singleton.
Consider the following variation on the Hierarchical Clustering problem: Usually, while building a hierarchical clustering, one recursively partitions the data until each cluster becomes a singleton. We relax the halting condition of the recursive process to stop whenever the remaining cluster is a graph belonging to a class $\mathcal{F}$.
arXiv:2606. 18972v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Extracting a flat clustering solution from a hierarchy is a common task in practical cluster analysis and can be formulated as an optimisation problem.
Extracting a flat clustering solution from a hierarchy is a common task in practical cluster analysis and can be formulated as an optimisation problem. Existing approaches focus on finding a single optimal solution.
The paper investigates whether the impossibility results for flat clustering—specifically Kleinberg’s axioms of scale invariance, richness, and consistency—extend to hierarchical clustering. It demonstrates that, unlike the flat case, there exist uncountably many hierarchical clustering methods that satisfy all three axioms, termed admissible methods. The authors construct several such methods, explore a refinement partial order among them, and show that while the set of admissible methods is diverse, every method shares a common backbone of well‑separated clusters.
The paper introduces the Universal Clustering Problem (UCP), a framework that captures the optimisation core common to many clustering methods by maximizing a polynomial‑time computable partition utility over a finite metric space. It proves UCP is NP‑hard through reductions from graph colouring and exact cover by 3‑sets, showing that popular algorithms such as k‑means, GMMs, DBSCAN, spectral clustering, and affinity propagation inherit this intractability. The authors argue that this unified hardness explains typical failure modes—like local optima and greedy merge traps—and suggest moving toward stability‑aware objectives and interaction‑driven formulations with explicit guarantees.
arXiv:2411. 01576v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The explainable clustering problem was first posed by Moshkovitz et al.
arXiv:2607. 24237v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Many existing clustering methods are designed based on a set-oriented definition---a cluster is a set of similar points---relying a point-to-point similarity function to find similar points.
arXiv:2602. 08542v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Given a weighted undirected graph, a number of clusters $k$, and an exponent $z$, the goal in the $(k, z)$-clustering problem on graphs is to select $k$ vertices as centers that minimize the sum of the distances raised to the power $z$ of each vertex to its closest center.
The paper investigates whether the three axioms of scale invariance, richness, and consistency—known to be mutually exclusive for flat clustering—can be jointly satisfied by hierarchical clustering. It demonstrates that, unlike the flat case, there exist uncountably many hierarchical clustering methods that meet all three axioms, termed admissible methods. The authors construct several such methods, explore a refinement partial order among them, and show that while the set of admissible methods is diverse, every admissible method shares a common backbone of well‑separated clusters.
arXiv:2502. 08397v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Clustering is a fundamental technique in data analysis and machine learning, used to group similar data points together.
arXiv:2607. 01993v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The silhouette is one of the most widely used measures to assess the quality of a $k$-clustering of a dataset of $n$ elements.