Abstract

Despite many empirical successes of spectral clustering methods -- algorithms that cluster points using eigenvectors of matrices derived from the distances between the points -- there are several unresolved issues. First, there is a wide variety of algorithms that use the eigenvectors in slightly different ways. Second, many of these algorithms have no proof that they will actually compute a reasonable clustering. In this paper, we present a simple spectral clustering algorithm that can be implemented using a few lines of Matlab. Using tools from matrix perturbation theory, we analyze the algorithm, and give conditions under which it can be expected to do well. We also show surprisingly good experimental results on a number of challenging clustering problems.

Keywords

Cluster analysisSpectral clusteringComputer scienceEigenvalues and eigenvectorsAlgorithmCURE data clustering algorithmCorrelation clusteringMATLABData miningTheoretical computer scienceArtificial intelligence

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Publication Info

Year
2001
Type
article
Volume
14
Pages
849-856
Citations
7749
Access
Closed

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Andrew Y. Ng, Michael I. Jordan, Yair Weiss (2001). On Spectral Clustering: Analysis and an algorithm. , 14 , 849-856.