Hierarchical Clustering

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Overview

Hierarchical clustering builds nested groups, often represented as a tree, so users can inspect structure at different levels rather than choose only one flat partition. Common approaches include agglomerative methods such as single, average, and Ward linkage, divisive methods, and graph- or density-based methods that use connectivity to handle irregular shapes and outliers. Current work also learns merge rules for tasks such as phylogenetics and vision, constructs hierarchies in hyperbolic space, and studies guarantees for fairness, approximation, and selecting cuts from a tree. A central tension is that methods must balance meaningful, robust clusters and useful multiscale structure against computational cost, parameter sensitivity, and the difficulty of choosing the right hierarchy or cut for a task.

Latest papers

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28 papers6 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Topological Equivalence of Spectral and Density Cluster Hierarchies

    Oct 22, 2026Sajjad HashemianHierarchical ClusteringDensity-Based Clustering

  2. GLOW: General Linear Models Optimized with Ward's Method

    Oct 16, 2026Matt HiggerNeuroimagingHierarchical Clustering

    Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA

  3. Algorithmically Aligned Neural Agglomerative Tree Construction

    Oct 5, 2026Robert R Nerem, Pranav Singh, Cheyenne Ward +1ClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    University of California San Diego · University of Washington

  4. Round-Trip KNN Clustering: multiscale hierarchical cluster detection on directed nearest-neighbour graphs

    Oct 5, 2026Eraldo Pereira Marinho, Caetano Mazzoni Ranieri, Fabricio Aparecido BreveClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    Department of Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Computing, S˜ao Paulo State University (UNESP), Institute of Geosciences and Exact Sciences, Av. 24-A, 1515, Rio Claro, S˜ao Paulo, Brazil.

  5. Interrelating Fruchterman-Reingold Graph Visualization and Agglomerative Clustering

    Sep 28, 2026Alexandre Benatti, Luciano da F. CostaScientific VisualizationHierarchical Clustering

    Institute of Mathematics and Statistics - DCC University of S˜ao Paulo Rua do Mat˜ao, 1010, S˜ao Paulo, SP 05508-090 Brazil · S˜ao Carlos Institute of Physics - DFCM University of S˜ao Paulo Av. Trabalhador S˜ao-Carlense, 400, S˜ao Carlos, SP 13566-590 Brazil

  6. Hierarchical Clustering and Signal Denoising on Digraphs

    Sep 28, 2026Yi Wang, Sippanon Kitimoon, Hrushikesh N. Mhaskar +1Graph Signal ProcessingHierarchical Clustering

    Department of Mathematics, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China · Data Science Research Center, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200, Thailand · Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711, USA

  7. Automatic depth-based local center clustering via ββ-integrated local depth and adaptive grouping

    Sep 22, 2026Siyi Wang, Alexandre Leblanc, Paul D. McNicholasClusteringHierarchical Clustering

  8. Hierarchical Clustering Can Jointly Satisfy Richness, Consistency, and Scale Invariance

    Sep 10, 2026Daichi Kuroda, Maximilien Dreveton, Matthias Grossglauser +1ClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    School of Computer and Communication Sciences ´Ecole Polytechnique F´ed´erale de Lausanne (EPFL) Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland · LAMA, UMR-CNRS 8050, Universit´e Gustave Eiffel 5 Bd Descartes, 77454 Marne-la-Vall´ee, France

  9. Individual Fairness in Hierarchical Clustering

    Aug 26, 2026Binita Maity, Shrutimoy DasHierarchical ClusteringAlgorithmic Fairness

    Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar

  10. Hyperbolic Hierarchical Clustering for Visual Representation Learning

    Aug 24, 2026Jianan Wei, Guikun Chen, Zhiyuan Weng +3Visual Representation LearningVision Transformer

    Zhejiang University · Tencent Hunyuan · Zhejiang Sci-Tech University

  11. Density-aware Hierarchical Clustering Based on Element-Categorized Connection Subgraphs

    Aug 7, 2026Yuning Yu, José Rodríguez-Piñeiro, Xuefeng Yin +1ClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    Tongji University, Shanghai, China · RadioSky (Shanghai) Communication Technology Co., Ltd, Shanghai, China

  12. Graph Partitioning with Demands: Generalized Conductance and its Applications

    Jul 14, 2026Michał Szyfelbein, Dariusz DereniowskiHierarchical ClusteringApproximation Algorithms

    Gdańsk University of Technology

  13. Hierarchical F\mathcal{F}-Clustering: Approximation and Hardness of Clustering into Trees and Bounded Diameter Graphs

    Jul 14, 2026Michał Szyfelbein, Dariusz DereniowskiHierarchical ClusteringGraph Clustering

    Gda´nsk University of Technology

  14. Performance Benchmarking and Optimisation of Clustering Algorithms for Local and Non-Local Similarity Measure in Medical Image Analysis

    Jul 10, 2026Sisipho Hamlomo, Marcellin AtemkengMedical Image AnalysisClustering

    Department of Mathematics, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa · Department of Statistics, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa · National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (NITheCS), Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa

  15. Term-Centric Hierarchy Induction from Heterogeneous Corpora

    Jun 25, 2026Elena Senger, Yuri Campbell, Jan-Peter Bergmann +2ClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    1MaiNLP, Center for Information and Language Processing, LMU Munich, Germany · 2Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Germany · Department of Computer Science, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark

  16. FOSC-X: An Extended Framework for Optimal Local Cuts and Non-Horizontal Cluster Selection from Clustering Hierarchies

    Jun 17, 2026Connor Simpson, Ricardo J. G. B. CampelloDynamic ProgrammingClustering

    Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.

  17. Recovering the Zipfian Distribution in Unsupervised Term Discovery

    Jun 9, 2026Danel Slabbert, Simon Malan, Herman KamperZipf's LawClustering

    Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

  18. Semi-Supervised Hyperbolic Hierarchical Clustering with Set-Level Structural Priors

    Jun 1, 2026Junjing Zheng, Xinyu Zhang, Xiangfeng Qiu +2ClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    College of Electronic Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China

  19. Score-Agnostic Structure Analysis in Large-Scale Performance Datasets

    May 25, 2026Patricia Hu, Silvan Peter, Gerhard WidmerHierarchical ClusteringMusic Information Retrieval

    Institute of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria · LIT AI Lab, Linz Institute of Technology, Linz, Austria

  20. 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

  21. Classification Fields: Arbitrarily Fine Recursive Hierarchical Clustering From Few Examples

    May 8, 2026Yicen Li, Ruiyang Hong, Anastasis Kratsios +2Hierarchical ClassificationClustering

    Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University, Canada · Vector Institute, Canada · University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

  22. Characterizing Admissible Objective Functions for Hierarchical Clustering

    Apr 26, 2026Ryuki Tsukuba, Kazutoshi AndoClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    Graduate School of Integrated Science and Technology, Shizuoka University,Jun Hamamatsu, Shizuoka 432-8561, Japan · Faculty of Engineering, Shizuoka University, Johoku 3-5-1, 432-8561 Hamamatsu, Japan

  23. Explainable AI in Speaker Recognition -- Making Latent Representations Understandable

    Apr 25, 2026Yanze Xu, Wenwu Wang, Mark D. PlumbleyClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK · Department of Informatics, King’s College London, London, WC2R 2LS, UK

  24. Lumbermark: Resistant Clustering by Chopping Up Mutual Reachability Minimum Spanning Trees

    Apr 8, 2026Marek GagolewskiDensity-Based ClusteringClustering

    Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science, ul. Koszykowa 75, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland · Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Newelska 6, 01-447 Warsaw, Poland

  25. Estimating Staged Event Tree Models via Hierarchical Clustering on the Simplex

    Mar 16, 2026Muhammad Shoaib, Eva Riccomagno, Manuele Leonelli +1Bayesian NetworksHierarchical Clustering

    University of Genova, Department of Mathematics, Genova, 16146, Italy · IE University, School of Science and Technology, Madrid, Spain · Universitat de València, Department of Statistics and Operational Research, València, , Spain

  26. Federated Hierarchical Clustering with Automatic Selection of Optimal Cluster Numbers

    Mar 13, 2026Yue Zhang, Chuanlong Qiu, Xinfa Liao +1Cluster Number EstimationClustering

    School of Computer Science, Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University, Guangzhou, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China · Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR, China

  27. HBRB-BoW: A Retrained Bag-of-Words Vocabulary for ORB-SLAM via Hierarchical BRB-KMeans

    Mar 4, 2026Minjae Lee, Sang-Min Choi, Gun-Woo Kim +1Simultaneous Localization and MappingHierarchical Clustering

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Gyeongsang National University, Republic of Korea

  28. Superpixel-Based Image Segmentation Using Squared 2-Wasserstein Distances

    Jan 22, 2026Jisui Huang, Andreas Alpers, Ke Chen +1Superpixel SegmentationImage Segmentation

    Department of Mathematical Sciences, Centre for Mathematical Imaging Techniques (CMIT), University of Liverpool, Peach Street, Liverpool, L697ZL, Merseyside, United Kingdom. · School of Mathematical Sciences, Capital Normal University, West Third Ring Road North, Haidian District, Beijing, 100084, China. · Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, Richmond St, Glasgow, G11XH, Scotland, United Kingdom. +1