Non-convex clustering via proximal alternating linearized minimization method

Abstract

Clustering is a fundamental learning task in a wide range of research fields. The most popular clustering algorithm is arguably the K-means algorithm, it is well known that the performance of K-means algorithm heavily depends on initialization due to its strong non-convexity nature. To overcome the initialization issue, in this paper, we first relax the K-means model as an optimization problem with non-convex constraints, then employ the Proximal Alternating Linearized Minimization (PALM) method to solve the relaxed non-convex optimization model. The convergence analysis of PALM algorithm for the clustering problem is also provided. Experimental results on several benchmark datasets are conducted to evaluate the efficiency of our approach.