REVIEW 3 major objections 3 minor 90 references
Persistent Multiscale Density-based Clustering
T0 review · 3 major / 3 minor · reviewed 2026-08-03 · deepseek-v4-flash
Pith's one-line read PLSCAN replaces HDBSCAN*'s manually tuned minimum cluster size with a persistence-based automatic choice, reading every stable leaf-cluster threshold from a single condensed tree.
desk verdict The leaf-tree construction in PLSCAN does not reproduce HDBSCAN*'s leaves for unbalanced merges, so the paper's central equivalence claim is unsupported — though the code and benchmark are solid and worth refereeing. read the letter →
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
The reading
What carries the argument
The leaf tree is the carrying object. It converts an HDBSCAN* condensed tree—a list of merges with distance d_mut and child size s—into birth-death intervals in minimum cluster size: s_max = min(left size, right size), s_min = max(children's s_min), with the parent's birth delayed until all downstream leaves vanish. The persistence trace sums s_max - s_min over all currently existing leaves and is evaluated only at the discrete s_min/s_max values where the leaf set changes. The formal counterpart is a metric d_s in which the distance between points is the smallest pruning parameter that puts them in the same leaf cluster, plus noise elements that record when a point ceases to belong to any l
What would settle it
Rerun HDBSCAN* on a small hand-built dataset with unbalanced nested clusters for every m_c from 2 to N, and compare the leaf clusters at each threshold with the intervals PLSCAN predicts from its single leaf tree; any mismatch in a birth or death threshold refutes the one-tree claim. A simpler check: compare merge sizes and distances in condensed trees computed at m_c=2 and at a large m_c on the same data—if they differ, the leaf tree foundation is violated.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
The central discovery is that the minimum cluster size in HDBSCAN* can be treated as a scale parameter, and the full family of HDBSCAN* leaf clusters across all m_c values can be recovered from one condensed tree. The paper introduces a leaf tree whose segments carry the interval (s_min, s_max] of thresholds for which they are leaf clusters: a child stops being a leaf at s_max when either child branch disappears, and a parent is born only after all its downstream leaves have disappeared, s_min = max(...). Summing the size persistence s_max - s_min over all leaves gives a persistence trace over m_c, and PLSCAN chooses the threshold with maximum total persistence; flat labels then follow in a
Load-bearing premise
The load-bearing premise is that a condensed tree built at a low minimum cluster size contains every merge HDBSCAN* would produce at higher thresholds, with the same merge sizes and distances; if pruning changes those quantities, the leaf tree misdescribes HDBSCAN*'s actual leaf clusters.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- HDBSCAN*'s minimum cluster size m_c no longer needs to be supplied by the user: PLSCAN returns the threshold with the maximum total persistence and the corresponding leaf clusters.
- Because k and m_c are decoupled, PLSCAN's clusterings change predictably with the neighbour count k; the paper reports lower sensitivity than HDBSCAN* across perturbations of k.
- Local maxima of the persistence trace provide alternative stable clusterings at different levels of detail, giving an analyst a multiscale view of the data rather than a single partition.
- The persistent-homology equivalence means the leaf-lifetime construction is not specific to cluster size: it applies to any monotonic pruning parameter of a linkage tree.
- On the evaluated datasets, average ARI at k=4 rises from 0.58 for HDBSCAN* to 0.72 for PLSCAN with size persistence, and low-dimensional runtimes are competitive with k-Means.
Reading between the lines
- Editorial inference: the 'one tree contains all thresholds' idea should transfer to other monotonic pruning schemes, such as density persistence or excess-of-mass pruning, producing parameter-free hierarchies for those methods as well.
- Editorial inference: the selection rule is a single straight cut through the leaf tree, so strongly unbalanced cluster sizes or two-sided structures may need multi-level cuts; the paper itself flags the E. coli and Yeast Galactose datasets as cases where this matters.
- Editorial inference: the persistent-homology reformulation opens the door to using barcode stability theorems to bound how much PLSCAN's clusters change under resampling—a stronger guarantee than the reported k-sensitivity experiments.
- Editorial inference: a synthetic-data study with known cluster sizes could separate two claims the paper runs together—that the leaf tree faithfully reproduces HDBSCAN* leaf clusters at all m_c, and that maximum total persistence is a good quality criterion.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. PLSCAN replaces HDBSCAN*'s user-set minimum cluster size m_c with an automatic persistence-based cut. It constructs a condensed tree at a low m_c, converts it into a 'leaf tree' storing the m_c intervals (s_min, s_max] over which each cluster segment is a leaf, computes a persistence trace by summing leaf size persistences, and selects the m_c maximizing total persistence. The paper claims that this procedure identifies all minimum cluster sizes for which HDBSCAN* produces stable leaf clusters, that it is equivalent to 0-dimensional persistent homology on a novel metric, and that it achieves higher average ARI and lower sensitivity to the neighbour parameter k than HDBSCAN* on real-world datasets.
Significance. The paper has concrete strengths: a fully specified algorithm with pseudocode, an open-source implementation, a broad benchmark over 17 datasets, and a clear computational-cost comparison. The idea of reading all minimum-cluster-size changes from a single condensed tree is attractive and, if made correct, would be a useful contribution to parameter-light density-based clustering. However, the central equivalence claim is undermined by the leaf-tree construction rule in Sec. 4.1, and the sensitivity formula in Sec. 5.1 is degenerate as printed. These issues must be resolved before the empirical and conceptual claims can be accepted.
major comments (3)
- [Sec. 4.1, Eq. (5)-(6), Alg. C2] The leaf-lifetime rule is not faithful to HDBSCAN*. For two sibling clusters of sizes a=10 and b=20, Eq. (5) sets both children's s_max to min(a,b)=10 and Eq. (6) sets the parent's s_min to 10. At m_c=15, HDBSCAN* leaf selection keeps the larger child as a leaf: the smaller child is pruned as noise, and the parent has only one child, so the parent is not a leaf. The larger child should have s_max=20. This also contradicts Appendix A's d_s metric (Eq. 10): points in the two blobs are not in the same leaf until m_c>20, not m_c>10. Consequently the leaf tree, the persistence trace, and the selected m_c are built from incorrect lifetimes, and the claim that PLSCAN 'identifies all minimum cluster sizes for which HDBSCAN* produces stable (leaf) clusters' is unsupported. The s_max/s_min rules must be corrected (e.g., a child's s_max should be its own size and a parent's s_min the maximum child
- [Sec. 5.1, Eq. (9)] The sensitivity score in Eq. (9) is identically 1 because the numerator and denominator are the same expression: |ARI(k_i±Δk)-ARI(k_i)| / |ARI(k_i±Δk)-ARI(k_i)|. As printed, the formula cannot generate Fig. 6 or support the conclusion that PLSCAN is less sensitive to k. Please correct the denominator (likely ARI(k_i) or a related baseline) and rerun the sensitivity analysis.
- [Sec. 5.1, Experimental setup] ARI is computed only over non-noise points. Since PLSCAN and HDBSCAN* label different fractions of points as noise (the per-dataset noise-fraction curves in Appendix B make this visible), a method that labels many points as noise can obtain a high ARI on the remaining subset even if its full labeling is poor. The average ARI in Table 1 and the sensitivity distributions in Fig. 6 are therefore not directly comparable. Please report ARI on all points, or use a noise-aware metric, and provide noise fractions together with the ARI scores.
minor comments (3)
- [Appendix A] The metric d_s in Eq. (10) is defined directly in terms of the leaf clusters ℒ_s, so 0-dimensional persistent homology on (Y,d_s) recovers those leaf lifetimes by construction. This is a formalization, not an independent characterization; the text should state this more carefully and avoid implying that PH 'uncovers' the leaf lifetimes without already knowing them.
- [Sec. 4.1] The claim that merge sizes and distances do not change with the m_c threshold is asserted without proof. Distances along the original dendrogram are invariant, but leaf statuses are m_c-dependent; a precise statement with a proof is needed, especially in light of the major comment above.
- [Abstract / Sec. 1.2] The paper advertises a 'parameter-light' method, but PLSCAN still requires k, the initial minimum cluster size, the persistence-measure choice, and UMAP preprocessing hyperparameters. Please state the number and role of the remaining parameters precisely.
Circularity Check
The persistent-homology equivalence is definitional: the metric d_s encodes leaf lifetimes, so PH recovers them by construction; the leaf-tree algorithm and benchmarks are otherwise independent.
-
self definitional
[Appendix A.2-A.3 (Eqs. 10, 12, 14)]
"we define a distance d_s(x_i,x_j) on X as the minimum pruning value s that places two points in the same leaf cluster: d_s(x_i,x_j)=min_s {s | ∃L∈ℒ_s : x_i,x_j∈L} ... ds(x_i,π_i)=min_s {s|∀L∈ℒ_s : x_i∉L} ... Applying persistent homology to the metric space (Y,d_s) uncovers the minimum cluster size ranges for which leaf-clusters exist."
The metric is constructed directly from the leaf-cluster sets ℒ_s: d_s is, by definition, the first pruning level at which two points share a leaf, and π_i is the first level at which a point belongs to no leaf. The Vietoris-Rips zero-dimensional barcode therefore has births and deaths equal to the very s_min/s_max values that define ℒ_s. The claimed 'equivalence' reads back exactly the information put into the metric; it is a restatement, not an independent derivation of leaf lifetimes. Since Appendix A is presented as demonstrating that PLSCAN 'is equivalent to persistent homology,' this part of the derivation is circular with the definition of the metric.
full rationale
The central PLSCAN algorithm—constructing a leaf tree from a single condensed tree and selecting m_c by total persistence—does not fit a parameter to the evaluation labels, and the ARI/sensitivity comparisons use external ground-truth labels. The self-citations to McInnes et al. are standard implementations of HDBSCAN*, not load-bearing uniqueness claims. The only load-bearing 'unification' that reduces by construction is the persistent-homology framing in Appendix A. I also note that Eq. 5's s_max = min(child sizes) is a correctness concern for unbalanced merges relative to HDBSCAN*'s leaf selection, but that is a mismatch with HDBSCAN*, not a circular step, so it does not further raise the circularity score.
Assumptions & free parameters
free parameters (4)
- k (number of mutual-reachability neighbours) =
4 recommended default; 10 in runtime tests; range [2,50] in sensitivity analysis
- persistence measure choice =
size (recommended)
- initial minimum cluster size m_c =
k (default), e.g., 4
- UMAP preprocessing hyperparameters =
cosine distance, n_neighbors=min(250,N-1), repulsion strengths 0.001/0.01/0.1/1, project to min(50,D) dimensions
assumptions (5)
- domain assumption A single condensed tree built at low m_c contains all merges that occur at higher m_c, with unchanged merge sizes and distances.
- ad hoc to paper Leaf clusters form a monotonic hierarchy under increasing m_c, and the parent-birth rule in Eq. 6 (s_min = max of children's s_min) yields exact leaf lifetimes.
- standard math The distance d_s in Eq. 10 is a metric on X and satisfies the ultrametric inequality Eq. 11; the extension to Y=X∪Π in Eqs. 12-14 is well-defined.
- ad hoc to paper Total size persistence, summed over leaf clusters at a cut, is a valid proxy for clustering quality at that m_c.
- domain assumption Monotonic pruning of a linkage hierarchy by minimum cluster size is a valid scale-space smoothing of the density profile.
invented entities (2)
-
Special elements π_i (Π = {π_i | x_i in X})
-
Phantom root
Cite this review
Pith. "Pith review of Persistent Multiscale Density-based Clustering." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/2TNFU2J4
@misc{pith2026251216558,
author = {Pith},
title = {Pith review of: Persistent Multiscale Density-based Clustering},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/2TNFU2J4}},
note = {Machine review of arXiv:2512.16558}
}
abstract
Clustering is a cornerstone of modern data analysis. Detecting clusters in exploratory data analyses (EDA) requires algorithms that make few assumptions about the data. Density-based clustering algorithms are particularly well-suited for EDA because they describe high-density regions, assuming only that a density exists. Applying density-based clustering algorithms in practice, however, requires selecting appropriate hyperparameters, which is difficult without prior knowledge of the data distribution. For example, DBSCAN requires selecting a density threshold, and HDBSCAN* relies on a minimum cluster size parameter. In this work, we propose Persistent Leaves Spatial Clustering for Applications with Noise (PLSCAN), a multiscale density-based clustering algorithm that replaces HDBSCAN*'s fixed minimum cluster size pruning of a mutual-reachability linkage hierarchy with a persistence-based cluster selection procedure. Effectively, PLSCAN identifies all minimum cluster sizes for which HDBSCAN* produces stable (leaf) clusters. In concept, PLSCAN applies scale-space clustering principles and is equivalent to persistent homology on a novel metric space. We compare its performance to HDBSCAN* on several real-world datasets, demonstrating that it achieves a higher median ARI, is less sensitive to changes in the number of mutual reachability neighbours, and has higher stability under resampling. Additionally, we compare PLSCAN's computational costs to $k$-Means++, demonstrating competitive run-times on low-dimensional datasets. At higher dimensions, run times scale more similarly to HDBSCAN*.
Figures
Figures from the paper (4 more)
Reference graph
Works this paper leans on
-
[1]
Ankerst, M., Breunig, M. M., Kriegel, H. P., and Sander, J. Optics: Ordering points to identify the clustering structure. SIGMOD Rec. (ACM Spec. Interes. Gr. Manag. Data), 28 0 (2): 0 49--60, 1999. DOI 10.1145/304181.304187 https://doi.org/10.1145/304181.304187
arXiv 1999
-
[2]
and Vassilvitskii, S
Arthur, D. and Vassilvitskii, S. k-means++: The advantages of careful seeding. Technical Report 2006-13, Stanford InfoLab, 2006. URL http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/778/
2006
-
[3]
a., Garrido, A., Marques-de S\' a , J., and Pereira-Leite, L
Ayres-de Campos, D., Bernardes, J. a., Garrido, A., Marques-de S\' a , J., and Pereira-Leite, L. Sisporto 2.0: A program for automated analysis of cardiotocograms. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, 9 0 (5): 0 311--318, 2000. DOI 10.1002/1520-6661(200009/10)9:5<311::aid-mfm12>3.0.co;2-9 https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6661(200009/10)9:5<311::aid-mfm12>3...
-
[4]
Baraldi, A. and Alpaydin, E. Constructive feedforward art clustering networks. i. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 13: 0 645--661, May 2002. DOI 10.1109/tnn.2002.1000130 https://doi.org/10.1109/tnn.2002.1000130
arXiv 2002
-
[5]
Reasoning well from badly drawn figures
Bartocci, C. “Reasoning well from badly drawn figures”: the birth of algebraic topology . Lett. Mat., 1 0 (1-2): 0 13--22, jun 2013. DOI 10.1007/s40329-013-0010-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40329-013-0010-4
-
[6]
Belkin, M. and Niyogi, P. Laplacian eigenmaps for dimensionality reduction and data representation. Neural Comput., 15 0 (6): 0 1373--1396, 2003. DOI 10.1162/089976603321780317 https://doi.org/10.1162/089976603321780317
-
[7]
Bentley, J. L. Multidimensional binary search trees used for associative searching. Commun. ACM, 18 0 (9): 0 509--517, 1975. DOI 10.1145/361002.361007 https://doi.org/10.1145/361002.361007
arXiv 1975
-
[8]
C., Ehrlich, R., and Full, W
Bezdek, J. C., Ehrlich, R., and Full, W. Fcm: The fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm. Computers & geosciences, 10 0 (2-3): 0 191--203, 1984
1984
Show all 90 references
-
[9]
o hm, C., Kailing, K., Kr \
B \" o hm, C., Kailing, K., Kr \" o ger, P., and Zimek, A. Computing clusters of correlation connected objects. Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int. Conf. Manag. Data, pages 455--466, 2004. DOI 10.1145/1007568.1007620 https://doi.org/10.1145/1007568.1007620
2004
-
[10]
Metanet : The theory of independent judges
Buscema, M. Metanet : The theory of independent judges. Substance Use & Misuse, 33 0 (2): 0 439--461, 1998. DOI 10.3109/10826089809115875 https://doi.org/10.3109/10826089809115875
1998 doi
-
[11]
J., Moulavi, D., and Sander, J
Campello, R. J., Moulavi, D., and Sander, J. Density-based clustering based on hierarchical density estimates. In Pacific-Asia conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, pages 160--172, Berlin, Heidelberg, Germany, 2013. Springer. DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-37456-2\_14 http...
2013 doi
-
[12]
Campello, R. J. G. B., Moulavi, D., Zimek, A., and Sander, J. Hierarchical density estimates for data clustering, visualization, and outlier detection. ACM Trans. Knowl. Discov. Data, 10 0 (1): 0 1--51, July 2015. DOI 10.1145/2733381 https://doi.org/10.1145/2733381
2015 doi
-
[13]
Topology and data
Carlsson, G. Topology and data. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 46: 0 255--308, Jan. 2009. DOI 10.1090/s0273-0979-09-01249-x https://doi.org/10.1090/s0273-0979-09-01249-x
2009 doi
-
[14]
Castro Gertrudes, J., Zimek, A., Sander, J., and Campello, R. J. A unified view of density-based methods for semi-supervised clustering and classification. Data mining and knowledge discovery, 33 0 (6): 0 1894--1952, 2019. DOI 10.1007/s10618-019-00651-1 https://doi.org/10.1007...
1952 doi
-
[15]
and Pachter, L
Chari, T. and Pachter, L. The specious art of single-cell genomics. PLOS Computational Biology, 19: 0 e1011288, Aug. 2023. DOI 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011288 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011288
2023 doi
-
[16]
A monothetic clustering method
Chavent, M. A monothetic clustering method. Pattern Recognition Letters, 19: 0 989--996, Sept. 1998. DOI 10.1016/s0167-8655(98)00087-7 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0167-8655(98)00087-7
1998 doi
-
[17]
Cleveland, W. S. Robust locally weighted regression and smoothing scatterplots. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74 0 (368): 0 829--836, 1979. DOI 10.1080/01621459.1979.10481038 https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1979.10481038
1979
-
[18]
and Elliott, M
Crisan, A. and Elliott, M. How to evaluate an evaluation study? comparing and contrasting practices in vis with those of other disciplines : Position paper. In 2018 IEEE Eval. Beyond - Methodol. Approaches Vis., pages 28--36. Ieee, Oct. 2018. DOI 10.1109/beliv.2018.8634420 htt...
2018
-
[19]
Simple, direct and efficient multi-way spectral clustering
Damle, A., Minden, V., and Ying, L. Simple, direct and efficient multi-way spectral clustering. Information and Inference: A Journal of the IMA, 8 0 (1): 0 181--203, 2019
2019
-
[20]
Topological persistence and simplification
Edelsbrunner, Letscher, and Zomorodian. Topological persistence and simplification. Discrete & Computational Geometry, 28: 0 511--533, 11 2002. DOI 10.1007/s00454-002-2885-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00454-002-2885-2
2002 doi
-
[21]
and Harer, J
Edelsbrunner, H. and Harer, J. Computational Topology an Introduction. American Mathematical Soc., 2010. ISBN 978-1-4704-6769-2
2010
-
[22]
and Ismail, M
El-Sonbaty, Y. and Ismail, M. On-line hierarchical clustering. Pattern Recognition Letters, 19: 0 1285--1291, Dec. 1998. DOI 10.1016/s0167-8655(98)00104-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0167-8655(98)00104-4
1998 doi
-
[23]
A density-based algorithm for discovering clusters in large spatial databases with noise
Ester, M., Kriegel, H.-P., Sander, J., and Xu, X. A density-based algorithm for discovering clusters in large spatial databases with noise. In Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Knowl. Discov. Data Min., pages 226--231, Portland, OR, USA, 1996. AAAI Press
1996
-
[24]
E., Ikotun, A
Ezugwu, A. E., Ikotun, A. M., Oyelade, O. O., Abualigah, L., Agushaka, J. O., Eke, C. I., and Akinyelu, A. A. A comprehensive survey of clustering algorithms: State-of-the-art machine learning applications, taxonomy, challenges, and future research prospects. Eng. Appl. Artif....
2021
-
[25]
and Kuijper, A
Florack, L. and Kuijper, A. The topological structure of scale-space images. Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision, 12: 0 65--79, 2 2000. DOI 10.1023/A:1008304909717 https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008304909717
-
[26]
Fred, A. L. and Jain, A. K. Combining multiple clusterings using evidence accumulation. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 27: 0 835--850, June 2005. DOI 10.1109/tpami.2005.113 https://doi.org/10.1109/tpami.2005.113
2005 doi
-
[27]
F., Ellis, D
Gemmeke, J. F., Ellis, D. P. W., Freedman, D., Jansen, A., Lawrence, W., Moore, R. C., Plakal, M., and Ritter, M. Audio set: An ontology and human-labeled dataset for audio events. In Proc. IEEE ICASSP 2017, New Orleans, LA, 2017
2017
-
[28]
Gomes, M. A. and Meisen, T. A review on customer segmentation methods for personalized customer targeting in e-commerce use cases. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 21: 0 527--570, Sept. 2023. DOI 10.1007/s10257-023-00640-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-023-00640-4
2023 doi
-
[29]
Hartigan, J. A. Clustering algorithms, volume 209. Wiley, New York, NY, USA, 1975
1975
-
[30]
What are the true clusters? Pattern Recognit
Hennig, C. What are the true clusters? Pattern Recognit. Lett., 64: 0 53--62, 2015. DOI 10.1016/j.patrec.2015.04.009 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2015.04.009
2015 doi
-
[31]
Hershey, S., Chaudhuri, S., Ellis, D. P. W., Gemmeke, J. F., Jansen, A., Moore, R. C., Plakal, M., Platt, D., Saurous, R. A., Seybold, B., Slaney, M., Weiss, R. J., and Wilson, K. Cnn architectures for large-scale audio classification. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on ...
2017
-
[32]
and Imiya, A
Hirano, Y. and Imiya, A. Scale-space clustering on a unit hypersphere. In Azzopardi, G. and Petkov, N., editors, Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, pages 186--197, Cham, 2015. Springer International Publishing. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-23192-1\_16 https://doi.org/10.1007/9...
2015 doi
-
[33]
and Nakai, K
Horton, P. and Nakai, K. A probabilistic classification system for predicting the cellular localization sites of proteins. In Ismb, volume 4, pages 109--115. St. Louis, Missouri, USA, 1996
1996
-
[34]
and Arabie, P
Hubert, L. and Arabie, P. Comparing partitions. J. Classif., 2 0 (1): 0 193--218, Dec. 1985. DOI 10.1007/bf01908075 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01908075
1985 doi
-
[35]
Jackson, J., Qiao, A., and Xing, E. P. Scaling hdbscan clustering with knn graph approximation. In Proceedings of the SysML Conference, pages 14--16, 2018
2018
-
[36]
Statistical pattern recognition: a review
Jain, A., Duin, R., and Mao, J. Statistical pattern recognition: a review. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22 0 (1): 0 4--37, 2000. DOI 10.1109/34.824819 https://doi.org/10.1109/34.824819
-
[37]
Jain, A. K. Data clustering: 50 years beyond k-means. Pattern Recognition Letters, 31: 0 651--666, June 2010. DOI 10.1016/j.patrec.2009.09.011 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patrec.2009.09.011
2010 doi
-
[38]
Keogh, E., Lonardi, S., and Ratanamahatana, C. A. Towards parameter-free data mining. In Proceedings of the tenth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining, pages 206--215. ACM, 8 2004. DOI 10.1145/1014052.1014077 https://doi.org/10.1145/101405...
2004
-
[39]
and von Luxburg, U
Kpotufe, S. and von Luxburg, U. Pruning nearest neighbor cluster trees. arXiv:1105.0540 https://arxiv.org/abs/1105.0540 [stat.ML], 5 2011
2011 arXiv
-
[40]
and Holub, J
Krcal, L. and Holub, J. Incremental locality and clustering-based compression. In 2015 Data Compression Conference, volume 2015-July, pages 203--212. Ieee, Apr. 2015. DOI 10.1109/dcc.2015.23 https://doi.org/10.1109/dcc.2015.23
2015 doi
-
[41]
The (black) art of runtime evaluation: Are we comparing algorithms or implementations? Knowledge and Information Systems, 52 0 (2): 0 341--378, 2017
Kriegel, H.-P., Schubert, E., and Zimek, A. The (black) art of runtime evaluation: Are we comparing algorithms or implementations? Knowledge and Information Systems, 52 0 (2): 0 341--378, 2017. DOI 10.1007/s10115-016-1004-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10115-016-1004-2
2017 doi
-
[42]
Learning multiple layers of features from tiny images
Krizhevsky, A., Hinton, G., et al. Learning multiple layers of features from tiny images. Technical report, Computer Science Department, University of Toronto, 2009. URL http://www.cs.toronto.edu/ kriz/learning-features-2009-TR.pdf
2009
-
[43]
Newsweeder: Learning to filter netnews
Lang, K. Newsweeder: Learning to filter netnews. In Prieditis, A. and Russell, S., editors, Machine Learning Proceedings 1995, pages 331--339. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco (CA), 1995. DOI 10.1016/b978-1-55860-377-6.50048-7 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-1-55860-377-6.50048-7
1995 doi
-
[44]
Defining clusters from a hierarchical cluster tree: the dynamic tree cut package for r
Langfelder, P., Zhang, B., and Horvath, S. Defining clusters from a hierarchical cluster tree: the dynamic tree cut package for r. Bioinformatics, 24 0 (5): 0 719--720, 2008. DOI 10.1093/bioinformatics/btm563 https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btm563
2008 doi
-
[45]
Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition
Lecun, Y., Bottou, L., Bengio, Y., and Haffner, P. Gradient-based learning applied to document recognition. Proc. IEEE, 86 0 (11): 0 2278--2324, 1998. DOI 10.1109/5.726791 https://doi.org/10.1109/5.726791
1998 doi
-
[46]
and Sander, J
Lelis, L. and Sander, J. Semi-supervised density-based clustering. In 2009 Ninth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, pages 842--847. Ieee, Dec. 2009. DOI 10.1109/icdm.2009.143 https://doi.org/10.1109/icdm.2009.143
2009 doi
-
[47]
Clustering by scale-space filtering
Leung, Y., Zhang, J.-S., and Xu, Z.-B. Clustering by scale-space filtering. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22: 0 1396--1410, 2000. DOI 10.1109/34.895974 https://doi.org/10.1109/34.895974
-
[48]
Liu, M., Jiang, X., and Kot, A. C. A multi-prototype clustering algorithm. Pattern Recognition, 42: 0 689--698, May 2009. DOI 10.1016/j.patcog.2008.09.015 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2008.09.015
2009 doi
-
[49]
Least squares quantization in pcm
Lloyd, S. Least squares quantization in pcm. IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 28 0 (2): 0 129--137, Mar. 1982. DOI 10.1109/tit.1982.1056489 https://doi.org/10.1109/tit.1982.1056489
1982
-
[50]
J., and Florack, L
Loog, M., Duistermaat, J. J., and Florack, L. M. J. On the Behavior of Spatial Critical Points under Gaussian Blurring A Folklore Theorem and Scale-Space Constraints, pages 183--192. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2001. DOI 10.1007/3-540-47778-0\_15 https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-...
2001 doi
-
[51]
Some methods for classification and analysis of multivariate observations
MacQueen, J. Some methods for classification and analysis of multivariate observations. In Proceedings of the fifth Berkeley symposium on mathematical statistics and probability, volume 5, pages 281--297. Oakland, CA, USA, 1967
1967
-
[52]
and Baum, M
Malzer, C. and Baum, M. A hybrid approach to hierarchical density-based cluster selection. In 2020 IEEE Int. Conf. Multisens. Fusion Integr. Intell. Syst., volume 2020-Septe, pages 223--228, Karlsruhe, Germany, Sept. 2020. Ieee. DOI 10.1109/mfi49285.2020.9235263 https://doi.or...
2020
-
[53]
and contributors
McInnes, L. and contributors. Fast HDBSCAN (version 0.1.2), 2023. URL https://github.com/TutteInstitute/fast\
2023
-
[54]
and Healy, J
McInnes, L. and Healy, J. Accelerated hierarchical density based clustering. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops (ICDMW), pages 33--42, New Orleans, LA, USA, 2017. Ieee. DOI 10.1109/icdmw.2017.12 https://doi.org/10.1109/icdmw.2017.12
2017 doi
-
[55]
hdbscan: Hierarchical density based clustering
McInnes, L., Healy, J., and Astels, S. hdbscan: Hierarchical density based clustering. The Journal of Open Source Software, 2 0 (11): 0 205, 2017. DOI 10.21105/joss.00205 https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00205
2017 doi
-
[56]
Umap: Uniform manifold approximation and projection for dimension reduction
McInnes, L., Healy, J., and Melville, J. Umap: Uniform manifold approximation and projection for dimension reduction. arXiv:1802.03426 https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.03426 [stat.ML], 2020
2020 arXiv
-
[57]
Hdbscan documentation: How soft clustering for hdbscan works, 2022
McInnes, L., Healy, J., and Astels, S. Hdbscan documentation: How soft clustering for hdbscan works, 2022. URL https://hdbscan.readthedocs.io/en/latest/soft\ Accessed: 2022-12-09, Revision: 109797c7
2022
-
[58]
M \" u ller, D. W. and Sawitzki, G. Excess mass estimates and tests for multimodality. J. Am. Stat. Assoc., 86 0 (415): 0 738--746, 1991. DOI 10.1080/01621459.1991.10475103 https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1991.10475103
1991
-
[59]
Efficiency issues of evolutionary k-means
Naldi, M., Campello, R., Hruschka, E., and Carvalho, A. Efficiency issues of evolutionary k-means. Applied Soft Computing, 11: 0 1938--1952, Mar. 2011. DOI 10.1016/j.asoc.2010.06.010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2010.06.010
1938 doi
-
[60]
Assessing single-cell transcriptomic variability through density-preserving data visualization
Narayan, A., Berger, B., and Cho, H. Assessing single-cell transcriptomic variability through density-preserving data visualization. Nature Biotechnology, 39: 0 765--774, June 2021. DOI 10.1038/s41587-020-00801-7 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-020-00801-7
2021 doi
-
[61]
Otakar Bor u vka on minimum spanning tree problem Translation of both the 1926 papers, comments, history
Ne s et r il, J., Milkov \' a , E., and Ne s et r ilov \' a , H. Otakar Bor u vka on minimum spanning tree problem Translation of both the 1926 papers, comments, history . Discrete Math., 233 0 (1-3): 0 3--36, Apr. 2001. DOI 10.1016/s0012-365x(00)00224-7 https://doi.org/10.101...
1926 doi
-
[62]
Neto, A. C. A., Sander, J., Campello, R. J., and Nascimento, M. A. Efficient computation and visualization of multiple density-based clustering hierarchies. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 33: 0 3075--3089, 2021. DOI 10.1109/tkde.2019.2962412 https://doi.o...
2021
-
[63]
Omohundro, S. M. Five balltree construction algorithms, 1989
1989
-
[64]
S., Zhu, Q., Huynh, C., Sivaramakrishnan, P., Preston, E., Dueck, H., Stefanik, D., Tan, K., Trapnell, C., Kim, J., Waterston, R
Packer, J. S., Zhu, Q., Huynh, C., Sivaramakrishnan, P., Preston, E., Dueck, H., Stefanik, D., Tan, K., Trapnell, C., Kim, J., Waterston, R. H., and Murray, J. I. A lineage-resolved molecular atlas of c. elegans embryogenesis at single-cell resolution. Science, 365 0 (6459): 0...
2019 doi
-
[65]
and Jun, C.-H
Park, H.-S. and Jun, C.-H. A simple and fast algorithm for k-medoids clustering. Expert Systems with Applications, 36 0 (2, Part 2): 0 3336--3341, 2009. DOI 10.1016/j.eswa.2008.01.039 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2008.01.039
2009 doi
-
[66]
Scikit-learn: Machine learning in python
Pedregosa, F., Varoquaux, G., Gramfort, A., Michel, V., Thirion, B., Grisel, O., Blondel, M., Prettenhofer, P., Weiss, R., Dubourg, V., Vanderplas, J., Passos, A., Cournapeau, D., Brucher, M., Perrot, M., and \'E douard Duchesnay. Scikit-learn: Machine learning in python. Jour...
2011
-
[67]
Clustering by measuring local direction centrality for data with heterogeneous density and weak connectivity
Peng, D., Gui, Z., Wang, D., Ma, Y., Huang, Z., Zhou, Y., and Wu, H. Clustering by measuring local direction centrality for data with heterogeneous density and weak connectivity. Nat. Commun., 13 0 (1): 0 5455, Sept. 2022. DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-33136-9 https://doi.org/10.1038...
2022 doi
-
[68]
W., Hallacy, C., Ramesh, A., Goh, G., Agarwal, S., Sastry, G., Askell, A., Mishkin, P., Clark, J., Krueger, G., and Sutskever, I
Radford, A., Kim, J. W., Hallacy, C., Ramesh, A., Goh, G., Agarwal, S., Sastry, G., Askell, A., Mishkin, P., Clark, J., Krueger, G., and Sutskever, I. Learning transferable visual models from natural language supervision. In Meila, M. and Zhang, T., editors, Proceedings of the...
2021
-
[69]
and Gurevych, I
Reimers, N. and Gurevych, I. Sentence-bert: Sentence embeddings using siamese bert-networks. arXiv:1908.10084 https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.10084 [cs.CL], 2019
1908 arXiv
-
[70]
and Leitte, H
Rieck, B. and Leitte, H. Exploring and comparing clusterings of multivariate data sets using persistent homology. Computer Graphics Forum, 35: 0 81--90, June 2016. DOI 10.1111/cgf.12884 https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.12884
2016 doi
-
[71]
P., and Xu, X
Schubert, E., Sander, J., Ester, M., Kriegel, H. P., and Xu, X. Dbscan revisited, revisited. ACM Transactions on Database Systems, 42: 0 1--21, Sept. 2017. DOI 10.1145/3068335 https://doi.org/10.1145/3068335
2017 doi
-
[72]
Simonoff, J. S. Analyzing categorical data, volume 496. Springer, 2003
2003
-
[73]
and Nugent, R
Stuetzle, W. and Nugent, R. A generalized single linkage method for estimating the cluster tree of a density. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 19: 0 397--418, 1 2010. DOI 10.1198/jcgs.2009.07049 https://doi.org/10.1198/jcgs.2009.07049
2010 arXiv
-
[74]
Twstream: Three-way stream clustering
Sun, J., Du, M., Lew, Z., and Dong, Y. Twstream: Three-way stream clustering. IEEE Trans. Fuzzy Syst., 32 0 (9): 0 4927--4939, 2024. DOI 10.1109/tfuzz.2024.3369716 https://doi.org/10.1109/tfuzz.2024.3369716
2024
-
[75]
Tarjan, R. E. Efficiency of a good but not linear set union algorithm. J. Acm, 22 0 (2): 0 215--225, 1975. DOI 10.1145/321879.321884 https://doi.org/10.1145/321879.321884
1975
-
[76]
Progress in clustering algorithms for astronomical spectra over a decade
Tian, J., Yang, H., Cai, J., Yang, Y., Li, X., Yi, Z., and Wang, L. Progress in clustering algorithms for astronomical spectra over a decade. Astronomical Techniques and Instruments, 2: 0 1--16, 2025. DOI 10.61977/ati2025030 https://doi.org/10.61977/ati2025030
2025 doi
-
[77]
Tukey, J. W. et al. Exploratory data analysis, volume 2. Springer, 1977
1977
-
[78]
K., Xu, X., and Ooi, B
Tung, A. K., Xu, X., and Ooi, B. C. Curler: Finding and visualizing nonlinear correlation clusters. Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int. Conf. Manag. Data, pages 467--478, 2005. DOI 10.1145/1066157.1066211 https://doi.org/10.1145/1066157.1066211
2005
-
[79]
and Kleinman, K
Unwin, A. and Kleinman, K. The iris data set: In search of the source of virginica. Significance, 18 0 (6): 0 26--29, Nov. 2021. DOI 10.1111/1740-9713.01589 https://doi.org/10.1111/1740-9713.01589
2021
-
[80]
and Hinton, G
van der Maaten, L. and Hinton, G. Visualizing data using t-sne. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 9 0 (86): 0 2579--2605, 2008. URL http://jmlr.org/papers/v9/vandermaaten08a.html
2008
-
[81]
A global sensitivity analysis tool for the parameters of multi-variable catchment models
van Griensven , A., Meixner, T., Grunwald, S., Bishop, T., Diluzio, M., and Srinivasan, R. A global sensitivity analysis tool for the parameters of multi-variable catchment models. Journal of Hydrology, 324 0 (1): 0 10--23, 2006. DOI 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2005.09.008 https://doi.o...
2006 doi
-
[82]
A flexible possibilistic c-template shell clustering method with adjustable degree of deformation
Wang, T. A flexible possibilistic c-template shell clustering method with adjustable degree of deformation. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE), pages 1516--1522. Ieee, July 2016. DOI 10.1109/fuzz-ieee.2016.7737870 https://doi.org/10.1109/fuzz-ie...
2016
-
[83]
Minilm: Deep self-attention distillation for task-agnostic compression of pre-trained transformers
Wang, W., Wei, F., Dong, L., Bao, H., Yang, N., and Zhou, M. Minilm: Deep self-attention distillation for task-agnostic compression of pre-trained transformers. In Larochelle, H., Ranzato, M., Hadsell, R., Balcan, M., and Lin, H., editors, Advances in Neural Information Proces...
2020
-
[84]
Scale space clustering evolution for salient region detection on 3d deformable shapes
Wang, X., Sohel, F., Bennamoun, M., Guo, Y., and Lei, H. Scale space clustering evolution for salient region detection on 3d deformable shapes. Pattern Recognition, 71: 0 414--427, 11 2017. DOI 10.1016/j.patcog.2017.05.018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patcog.2017.05.018
2017 doi
-
[85]
Ward Jr., J. H. Hierarchical grouping to optimize an objective function. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 58 0 (301): 0 236--244, 1963. DOI 10.1080/01621459.1963.10500845 https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1963.10500845
1963
-
[86]
A quantitative analysis and performance study for similarity-search methods in high-dimensional spaces
Weber, R., Schek, H.-J., and Blott, S. A quantitative analysis and performance study for similarity-search methods in high-dimensional spaces. In Vldb, volume 98, pages 194--205, 1998
1998
-
[87]
Fashion-mnist: a novel image dataset for benchmarking machine learning algorithms
Xiao, H., Rasul, K., and Vollgraf, R. Fashion-mnist: a novel image dataset for benchmarking machine learning algorithms. arXiv:1708.07747 https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.07747, 2017
2017 arXiv
-
[88]
and Wunsch, D
Xu, R. and Wunsch, D. Survey of clustering algorithms. IEEE Trans. Neural Networks, 16 0 (3): 0 645--678, May 2005. DOI 10.1109/tnn.2005.845141 https://doi.org/10.1109/tnn.2005.845141
2005
-
[89]
Y., Fraley, C., Murua, A., Raftery, A
Yeung, K. Y., Fraley, C., Murua, A., Raftery, A. E., and Ruzzo, W. L. Model-based clustering and data transformations for gene expression data. Bioinformatics, 17 0 (10): 0 977--987, Oct. 2001. DOI 10.1093/bioinformatics/17.10.977 https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/17.10.977
2001 doi
-
[90]
Y., Medvedovic, M., and Bumgarner, R
Yeung, K. Y., Medvedovic, M., and Bumgarner, R. E. Clustering gene-expression data with repeated measurements. Genome biology, 4 0 (5): 0 R34, 2003. DOI 10.1186/gb-2003-4-5-r34 https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-2003-4-5-r34
2003 doi
Reviewed August 3, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.
Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.