Outliers Detection Is Not So Hard: Approximation Algorithms for Robust Clustering Problems Using Local Search Techniques

MaRDI QIDQ6356534zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Yishui Wang, Rolf H. Möhring, Chenchen Wu, Dachuan Xu, Dongmei Zhang

Publication date 20 December 2020

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Approximation algorithms (68W25) Deterministic network models in operations research (90B10) Discrete location and assignment (90B80)

Abstract: In this paper, we consider two types of robust models of the $k$-median/$k$-means problems: the outlier-version ($k$-MedO/$k$-MeaO) and the penalty-version ($k$-MedP/$k$-MeaP), in which we can mark some points as outliers and discard them. In $k$-MedO/$k$-MeaO, the number of outliers is bounded by a given integer. In $k$-MedP/$k$-MeaP, we do not bound the number of outliers, but each outlier will incur a penalty cost. We develop a new technique to analyze the approximation ratio of local search algorithms for these two problems by introducing an adapted cluster that can capture useful information about outliers in the local and the global optimal solution. For $k$-MeaP, we improve the best known approximation ratio based on local search from $25+varepsilon$ to $9+varepsilon$. For $k$-MedP, we obtain the best known approximation ratio. For $k$-MedO/$k$-MeaO, there exists only two bi-criteria approximation algorithms based on local search. One violates the outlier constraint (the constraint on the number of outliers), while the other violates the cardinality constraint (the constraint on the number of clusters). We consider the former algorithm and improve its approximation ratios from $17+varepsilon$ to $3+varepsilon$ for $k$-MedO, and from $274+varepsilon$ to $9+varepsilon$ for $k$-MeaO.

This page was built for publication: Outliers Detection Is Not So Hard: Approximation Algorithms for Robust Clustering Problems Using Local Search Techniques

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6356534)