44 research outputs found
Exact Clustering of Weighted Graphs via Semidefinite Programming
As a model problem for clustering, we consider the densest k-disjoint-clique
problem of partitioning a weighted complete graph into k disjoint subgraphs
such that the sum of the densities of these subgraphs is maximized. We
establish that such subgraphs can be recovered from the solution of a
particular semidefinite relaxation with high probability if the input graph is
sampled from a distribution of clusterable graphs. Specifically, the
semidefinite relaxation is exact if the graph consists of k large disjoint
subgraphs, corresponding to clusters, with weight concentrated within these
subgraphs, plus a moderate number of outliers. Further, we establish that if
noise is weakly obscuring these clusters, i.e, the between-cluster edges are
assigned very small weights, then we can recover significantly smaller
clusters. For example, we show that in approximately sparse graphs, where the
between-cluster weights tend to zero as the size n of the graph tends to
infinity, we can recover clusters of size polylogarithmic in n. Empirical
evidence from numerical simulations is also provided to support these
theoretical phase transitions to perfect recovery of the cluster structure
Convex optimization for the planted k-disjoint-clique problem
We consider the k-disjoint-clique problem. The input is an undirected graph G
in which the nodes represent data items, and edges indicate a similarity
between the corresponding items. The problem is to find within the graph k
disjoint cliques that cover the maximum number of nodes of G. This problem may
be understood as a general way to pose the classical `clustering' problem. In
clustering, one is given data items and a distance function, and one wishes to
partition the data into disjoint clusters of data items, such that the items in
each cluster are close to each other. Our formulation additionally allows
`noise' nodes to be present in the input data that are not part of any of the
cliques. The k-disjoint-clique problem is NP-hard, but we show that a convex
relaxation can solve it in polynomial time for input instances constructed in a
certain way. The input instances for which our algorithm finds the optimal
solution consist of k disjoint large cliques (called `planted cliques') that
are then obscured by noise edges and noise nodes inserted either at random or
by an adversary
Convex relaxation for the planted clique, biclique, and clustering problems
A clique of a graph G is a set of pairwise adjacent nodes of G. Similarly, a biclique (U, V ) of a bipartite graph G is a pair of disjoint, independent vertex sets such that each node in U is adjacent to every node in V in G. We consider the problems of identifying the maximum clique of a graph, known as the maximum clique problem, and identifying the biclique (U, V ) of a bipartite graph that maximizes the product |U | · |V |, known as the maximum edge biclique problem. We show that finding a clique or biclique of a given size in a graph is equivalent to finding a rank one matrix satisfying a particular set of linear constraints. These problems can be formulated as rank minimization problems and relaxed to convex programming by replacing rank with its convex envelope, the nuclear norm. Both problems are NP-hard yet we show that our relaxation is exact in the case that the input graph contains a large clique or biclique plus additional nodes and edges. For each problem, we provide two analyses of when our relaxation is exact. In the first,
the diversionary edges are added deterministically by an adversary. In the second, each potential edge is added to the graph independently at random with fixed probability p. In the random case, our bounds match the earlier bounds of Alon, Krivelevich, and Sudakov, as well as Feige and Krauthgamer for the maximum clique problem.
We extend these results and techniques to the k-disjoint-clique problem. The maximum node k-disjoint-clique problem is to find a set of k disjoint cliques of a given input graph containing the maximum number of nodes. Given input graph G and nonnegative edge
weights w, the maximum mean weight k-disjoint-clique problem seeks to identify the set of k disjoint cliques of G that maximizes the sum of the average weights of the edges, with respect to w, of the complete subgraphs of G induced by the cliques. These problems may be considered as a way to pose the clustering problem. In clustering, one wants to partition a given data set so that the data items in each partition or cluster are similar and the items in different clusters are dissimilar. For the graph G such that the set of nodes represents a given data set and any two nodes are adjacent if and only if the corresponding items are similar, clustering the data into k disjoint clusters is equivalent to partitioning G into k-disjoint cliques. Similarly, given a complete graph with nodes corresponding to a given data set and edge weights indicating similarity between each pair of items, the data may be clustered by solving the maximum mean weight k-disjoint-clique problem.
We show that both instances of the k-disjoint-clique problem can be formulated as rank constrained optimization problems and relaxed to semidefinite programs using the nuclear norm relaxation of rank. We also show that when the input instance corresponds to a collection of k disjoint planted cliques plus additional edges and nodes, this semidefinite relaxation is exact for both problems. We provide theoretical bounds that guarantee exactness of our relaxation and provide empirical examples of successful applications of our algorithm to synthetic data sets, as well as data sets from clustering applications
Solving ptychography with a convex relaxation
Ptychography is a powerful computational imaging technique that transforms a
collection of low-resolution images into a high-resolution sample
reconstruction. Unfortunately, algorithms that are currently used to solve this
reconstruction problem lack stability, robustness, and theoretical guarantees.
Recently, convex optimization algorithms have improved the accuracy and
reliability of several related reconstruction efforts. This paper proposes a
convex formulation of the ptychography problem. This formulation has no local
minima, it can be solved using a wide range of algorithms, it can incorporate
appropriate noise models, and it can include multiple a priori constraints. The
paper considers a specific algorithm, based on low-rank factorization, whose
runtime and memory usage are near-linear in the size of the output image.
Experiments demonstrate that this approach offers a 25% lower background
variance on average than alternating projections, the current standard
algorithm for ptychographic reconstruction.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure
Guaranteed clustering and biclustering via semidefinite programming
Identifying clusters of similar objects in data plays a significant role in a
wide range of applications. As a model problem for clustering, we consider the
densest k-disjoint-clique problem, whose goal is to identify the collection of
k disjoint cliques of a given weighted complete graph maximizing the sum of the
densities of the complete subgraphs induced by these cliques. In this paper, we
establish conditions ensuring exact recovery of the densest k cliques of a
given graph from the optimal solution of a particular semidefinite program. In
particular, the semidefinite relaxation is exact for input graphs corresponding
to data consisting of k large, distinct clusters and a smaller number of
outliers. This approach also yields a semidefinite relaxation for the
biclustering problem with similar recovery guarantees. Given a set of objects
and a set of features exhibited by these objects, biclustering seeks to
simultaneously group the objects and features according to their expression
levels. This problem may be posed as partitioning the nodes of a weighted
bipartite complete graph such that the sum of the densities of the resulting
bipartite complete subgraphs is maximized. As in our analysis of the densest
k-disjoint-clique problem, we show that the correct partition of the objects
and features can be recovered from the optimal solution of a semidefinite
program in the case that the given data consists of several disjoint sets of
objects exhibiting similar features. Empirical evidence from numerical
experiments supporting these theoretical guarantees is also provided