arXiv:2602.13684cs.LGcs.AI2026-02

提出相关聚类的稀疏化方法,在少量边信息下仍保持良好近似性。

On the Sparsifiability of Correlation Clustering: Approximation Guarantees under Edge Sampling

  • 基于三角不等式约束的稀疏化策略,仅需约√(n³)条边即可保证效果
  • 在伪度量结构下,观测约n^{3/2}条边即可实现10/3近似比
  • 适用于大规模相关聚类,尤其适合边数据不完整的场景

相关聚类(CC)是基础的无监督学习任务,其最优线性规划(LP)近似需Θ(n³)个三角不等式约束,难以规模化。本文首次研究CC中稀疏化与近似间的权衡,揭示伪度量与一般加权实例的结构性差异。正向结果:聚类分歧类的VC维为n−1,可构造最优大小˜O(n/ε²)的加性ε-核心集;任意LP顶点最多激活二项式系数½(n²)个三角不等式,支持精确割平面求解;一种通过三角不等式补全缺失边际的稀疏化LP-PIVOT算法,在观测˜Θ(n^{3/2})条边后,以可计算的插值质量统计量¯Γ_w控制误差,达到鲁棒的10/3近似。反向结果:利用Yao最小最大原理证明,若无伪度量结构,任何仅观测o(n)条随机边的算法会遭遇无界近似比,表明伪度量结构不仅决定可解性,也决定了对不完整信息的鲁棒性。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Correlation Clustering (CC) is a fundamental unsupervised learning primitive whose strongest LP-based approximation guarantees require $Θ(n^3)$ triangle inequality constraints and are prohibitive at scale. We initiate the study of \emph{sparsification--approximation trade-offs} for CC, asking how much edge information is needed to retain LP-based guarantees. We establish a structural dichotomy between pseudometric and general weighted instances. On the positive side, we prove that the VC dimension of the clustering disagreement class is exactly $n{-}1$, yielding additive $\varepsilon$-coresets of optimal size $\tilde{O}(n/\varepsilon^2)$; that at most $\binom{n}{2}$ triangle inequalities are active at any LP vertex, enabling an exact cutting-plane solver; and that a sparsified variant of LP-PIVOT, which imputes missing LP marginals via triangle inequalities, achieves a robust $\frac{10}{3}$-approximation (up to an additive term controlled by an empirically computable imputation-quality statistic $\overlineΓ_w$) once $\tildeΘ(n^{3/2})$ edges are observed, a threshold we prove is sharp. On the negative side, we show via Yao's minimax principle that without pseudometric structure, any algorithm observing $o(n)$ uniformly random edges incurs an unbounded approximation ratio, demonstrating that the pseudometric condition governs not only tractability but also the robustness of CC to incomplete information.

聚类稀疏化近似算法

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