Clustering is a fundamental class of data analysis techniques with the most important representatives being centroid-based methods like $k$-means. Such methods are strongly connected to quantization problems, which aim to approximate general probability measures with discrete ones.
arXiv:2605. 14981v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Gromov--Wasserstein (GW) distances compare graphs, shapes, and point clouds through internal distances, without requiring a common coordinate system.
By Ao Xu, Tieru Wu
The paper presents a new duality formulation for the Gromov‑Wasserstein distance that applies to all finitely supported metric‑measure spaces, with and without entropic regularization. Using this duality, the authors derive sample‑complexity bounds and limit distributions for empirical GW distances, and introduce algorithms with formal convergence guarantees. These results enable a principled, efficient method for testing isomorphism between distributions on graphs with a fixed number of nodes based on samples.
By Gabriel Rioux, Joanna Marks, Riccardo Passeggeri, Ziv Goldfeld
arXiv:2608. 27774v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Efficiently and robustly analyzing shape data is critical across many scientific disciplines.
By Cl\'ement Soubrier, Geoffrey Woollard, Andrew Warren, Khanh Dao Duc
The paper introduces a geometric framework for measuring how far empirical datasets deviate from the Gaussian family using optimal transport theory. It defines two new quantities—the relative Wasserstein angle and the orthogonal projection distance—based on the cone structure of the relative translation invariant quadratic Wasserstein space, and shows that the usual moment‑matching Gaussian is not generally the $W_2$‑nearest Gaussian. Closed‑form expressions are derived for one‑dimensional and several location–scale families, while a numerical approximation is proposed for higher dimensions, with experiments demonstrating convergence, stability, and the angle’s robustness as a non‑Gaussianity indicator.
By Binshuai Wang, Peng Wei
arXiv:2605. 09916v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We introduce the observable Wasserstein distance, a framework for deriving lower bounds on the Wasserstein distance between probability measures on Polish metric spaces, designed to bypass the computational intractability of exact optimal transport in large-scale, non-Euclidean datasets.
By Edivaldo Lopes dos Santos, Leandro Vicente Mauri, Washington Mio, Tom Needham