Clustering

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Overview

Clustering seeks useful groupings when labels are absent or incomplete, helping reveal structure in data such as text, images, graphs, time series, and scientific measurements. Methods include centroid-based k-means, density and hierarchical clustering, graph and spectral methods, mixture models, and newer approaches that learn embeddings or use optimal transport; fairness, privacy, streaming, and federated settings add further constraints. Work also studies how to choose the number of clusters and assess stability, uncertainty, interpretability, and statistical significance. No single method works best across data types: deep methods do not consistently beat strong conventional algorithms, and reliable validation remains a central challenge.

Latest papers

CardsList

347 papers33 papers in the last four weeks, up 18% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. ExDBSCAN: Explaining DBSCAN with Counterfactual Reasoning -- Additional Material

    May 28, 2026Pernille Matthews, Lena Krieger, Tommaso Amico +3Explainable Artificial IntelligenceCounterfactual Explanations

    LMU Munich, DBS, MCML Munich, Germany

  2. A new completely parameter-free clustering algorithm for unsupervised classification of BATSE gamma-ray bursts

    May 28, 2026Soumita ModakClusteringUnsupervised Clustering

    Department of Statistics, Presidency University 86/1 College Street, Kolkata-700073, India

  3. CLUBench: A Clustering Benchmark

    May 28, 2026Feng Xiao, Dazhi Fu, Chris Ding +1Benchmark DesignClustering

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen)

  4. Fitting Unknown Number of Hyperplanes with Manifold Optimization

    May 27, 2026Zhiqin Cheng, Yu Zhan, Mingjin Zhang +2Clustering

    Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong · Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, ShenZhen, China · Research Institute of Multiple Agents and Embodied Intelligence, Pengcheng Laboratory, ShenZhen, China +1

  5. SmartIterator: Visual Analytics Workflows for Supervising Unsupervised Data Grouping

    May 27, 2026Gennady Andrienko, Natalia AndrienkoScientific VisualizationData Visualization

    Fraunhofer Institute IAIS, Sankt Augustin, Germany, the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Sankt Augustin, Germany, and City St George’s, University of London, UK.

  6. Affinity Graph Connectivity in Convex Clustering

    May 23, 2026Sam Rosen, Jason XuClustering

    Department of Statistical Science, Duke University · Department of Biostatistics, University of California Los Angeles

  7. Clustering based on Stochastic Dominance with application for risk averters and risk seekers

    May 23, 2026Hua Li, Xue Jia, Yilin Kang +1Quantitative FinanceClustering

    School of Science, Changchun University, Changchun, China. · School of Mathematics and Science, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.

  8. How Much Structure Do LLMs Need? Evaluating LLMs for Bibliometric Cluster Description

    May 23, 2026Abraham Camelo-Guerrero, Jairo Diaz-RodriguezLLM EvaluationClustering

    School of Information Technology York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 · Department of Mathematics and Statistics York University Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3

  9. Benchmarking Patent Embeddings: A Multi-Task Evaluation of 22 Models Across Retrieval, Classification, and Clustering

    May 22, 2026Amirhossein Yousefiramandi, Ciaran CooneyLegal IRClustering

    Clarivate, Intellectual Property Barcelona, Spain 08025

  10. Detecting Metastable Basins in High Dimensions via Marginal Trajectory Distribution Discrimination

    May 22, 2026Taj Jones-McCormickDynamical SystemsTwo-Sample Testing

  11. EnCAgg: Enhanced Clustering Aggregation for Robust Federated Learning against Dynamic Model Poisoning

    May 21, 2026Tianyun Zhang, Zhen Yang, Haozhao Wang +2Federated Learning AggregationByzantine-Robust Federated Learning

    School of Cyberspace Security, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China · Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

  12. Minimum Description Length based Granular-Ball Tree Regularization for Spectral Clustering

    May 21, 2026Zeqiang Xian, Caihui Liu, Yong Zhang +1Graph Structure LearningClustering

    Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Gannan Normal University, Ganzhou 341000, Jiangxi, China · Key Laboratory of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence of Jiangxi Education Institutes, Gannan Normal University, Ganzhou 341000, Jiangxi, China

  13. Unsupervised clustering and classification of upper limb EMG signals during functional movements: a data-driven

    May 20, 2026L. F. Salazar Álvarez, D. Escobar-Saltarén, M. B. Salazar Sánchez +1EMG-Based Gesture RecognitionClustering

    In2Lab, Engineer Faculty, Universidad de Antioquia. Medellín, Calle 70 No. 52-21, A.A. 1226 · School of Engineering and Sciencies, Tecnológico de Monterrey. Guadalajara, México

  14. A Unified Framework for Structure-Aware Clustering and Heterogeneous Causal Graph Learning

    May 19, 2026Honglin Du, Muxuan Liang, Xiang ZhongStructural Causal ModelsClustering

    Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA · Department of Biostatistics, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA

  15. GUT-IS: A Data-Driven Approach to Integrating Constructs and Their Relations in Information Systems

    May 18, 2026Maximilian Reinhardt, Jonas Scharfenberger, Burkhardt FunkLatent Variable ModelsClustering

    Institute of Information Systems Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany

  16. When Fireflies Cluster; Enhancing Automatic Clustering via Centroid-Guided Firefly Optimization

    May 18, 2026MKA Ariyaratne, Azwirman Gusrialdi, Yury Nikulin +1Multi-Objective Evolutionary OptimizationMetaheuristic Optimization

    Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka · Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences,Tampere University, Tampere, Pirkanmaa, Finland · Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Turku, Finland

  17. TextClusterLab: An Integrated Framework for Reliable Text Clustering Studies

    May 17, 2026Daoming Wan, Yizheng Huang, Jimmy X. HuangClusteringSynthetic Data Generation

    Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management Research Lab, York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  18. An Analytical Multiple Criteria Framework for Temporal and Dynamic Business-to-Business Customer Segmentation in Manufacturing

    May 16, 2026Muhammad Raees, Konstantinos Papangelis, Vassilis Javed KhanClusteringMulti-Criteria Decision Analysis

    Rochester Institute of Technology Rochester NY USA · Independent Researcher

  19. Capturing LLM Capabilities via Evidence-Calibrated Query Clustering

    May 16, 2026Fangzhou Wu, Sandeep Silwal, Qiuyi ZhangLLM EvaluationClustering

    University of Wisconsin–Madison · 2Elorian AI

  20. K-Models: a Flexible and Interpretable Method for Ordinal Clustering with Application to Antigen-Antibody Interaction Profiles

    May 14, 2026Giulia Patanè, Alessandra Menafoglio, Alexander Krauth +4Clustering

    MOX, Department of Mathematics, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milan, 20133, Italy. · Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry (IPTC), Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 18, Tübingen, 72076, Germany. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milan, 20133, Italy.

  21. ToMAToMP: Robust and Multi-Parameter Topological Clustering

    May 14, 2026Ludo Andrianirina, Mathieu CarrièreClusteringPersistent Homology

    DataShape, Centre Inria d’Université Côte d’Azur, Sophia-Antipolis, France

  22. Fast and effective algorithms for fair clustering at scale

    May 13, 2026Claudio Mantuano, Manuel Kammermann, Philipp BaumannClusteringAlgorithmic Fairness

    Department of Business Administration, University of Bern, Engehaldenstrasse 4, 3012 Bern, Switzerland

  23. Amortized Neural Clustering of Time Series based on Statistical Features

    May 13, 2026Ángel López-Oriona, Ying SunCluster Number EstimationAmortized Inference

    CEMSE Division, Statistics Program, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia. · Statistics Program, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

  24. Reducing Bias and Variance: Generative Semantic Guidance and Bi-Layer Ensemble for Image Clustering

    May 13, 2026Feijiang Li, Zhenxiong Li, Jieting Wang +3Ensemble LearningClustering

    Institute of Big Data Science and Industry, Shanxi University · Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Science Intelligence of Shanxi Province · School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanxi University

  25. H2G: Hierarchy-Aware Hyperbolic Grouping for 3D Scenes

    May 12, 2026ByungHa Ko, Youngmin Lee, Dong Hwan KimClusteringHierarchical Representation Learning

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Korea University · Intelligence and Interaction Research Center, Korea Institute of Science and Technology

  26. Beyond Majority Voting: Agreement-Based Clustering to Model Annotator Perspectives in Subjective NLP Tasks

    May 11, 2026Tadesse Destaw Belay, Ibrahim Said Ahmad, Idris Abdulmumin +6Annotator DisagreementClustering

    1Instituto Politécnico Nacional · University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point · University of Pretoria +3

  27. MDL-GBG: A Non-parametric and Interpretable Granular-Ball Generation Method for Clustering

    May 9, 2026Zeqiang Xian, Caihui Liu, Yong Zhang +3ClusteringUnsupervised Clustering

    Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Gannan Normal University, Ganzhou 341000, Jiangxi, China · Key Laboratory of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence of Jiangxi Education Institutes, Gannan Normal University, Ganzhou 341000, Jiangxi, China · Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, 201804 Shanghai, China +1

  28. PHIDA: Persistence-Guided Node-to-Cluster Mapping for Online Clustering

    May 9, 2026Naoki Masuyama, Yusuke Nojima, Stefan Wermter +3ClusteringUnsupervised Clustering

    Graduate School of Informatics, Osaka Metropolitan University · Knowledge Technology Research Group, Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg · Graduate School of Environmental, Life, Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University +2

  29. Training-Induced Escape from Token Clustering in a Mean-Field Formulation of Transformers

    May 8, 2026Noboru Isobe, Daisuke Inoue, Masaaki ImaizumiTransformerTransformer Training Dynamics

    RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project · Imperial College London · The University of Tokyo +1

  30. A Flexible Adaptive Stable Clustering Algorithm for Archive-Scale Online Mass Spectrometry

    May 8, 2026Shao Shi, Xin Yang, Huiran Feng +8Algorithmic StabilityClustering

    Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement and Early Warning Technology for Urban Environmental Health Risks, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, 1088 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen, 518055, Guangdong, China. · Guangdong Provincial Observation and Research Station for Coastal Atmosphere and Climate of the Greater Bay Area, Southern University of Science and Technology, 1088 Xueyuan Avenue, Shenzhen, 518055, Guangdong, China.