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arXiv · 1911.00958

Clustering in Partially Labeled Stochastic Block Models via Total Variation Minimization

Alexander Jung
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Abstract

A main task in data analysis is to organize data points into coherent groups or clusters. The stochastic block model is a probabilistic model for the cluster structure. This model prescribes different probabilities for the presence of edges within a cluster and between different clusters. We assume that the cluster assignments are known for at least one data point in each cluster. In such a partially labeled stochastic block model, clustering amounts to estimating the cluster assignments of the remaining data points. We study total variation minimization as a method for this clustering task. We implement the resulting clustering algorithm as a highly scalable message-passing protocol. We also provide a condition on the model parameters such that total variation minimization allows for accurate clustering.

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Alexander Jung. 2019-11-03. Clustering in Partially Labeled Stochastic Block Models via Total Variation Minimization. https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.00958

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