Given a sample from a probability measure with support on a submanifold in
Euclidean space one can construct a neighborhood graph which can be seen as an
approximation of the submanifold. The graph Laplacian of such a graph is used
in several machine learning methods like semi-supervised learning,
dimensionality reduction and clustering. In this paper we determine the
pointwise limit of three different graph Laplacians used in the literature as
the sample size increases and the neighborhood size approaches zero. We show
that for a uniform measure on the submanifold all graph Laplacians have the
same limit up to constants. However in the case of a non-uniform measure on the
submanifold only the so called random walk graph Laplacian converges to the
weighted Laplace-Beltrami operator.Comment: Improved presentation, typos corrected, to appear in JML