We present a new algorithm for spectral clustering based on a column-pivoted QR factorization that may be directly used for cluster assignment or to provide an initial guess for k-means. Our algorithm is simple to implement, direct, and requires no initial guess. Furthermore, it scales linearly in the number of nodes of the graph and a randomized variant provides significant computational gains. Provided the subspace spanned by the eigenvectors used for clustering contains a basis that resembles the set of indicator vectors on the clusters, we prove that both our deterministic and randomized algorithms recover a basis close to the indicators in Frobenius norm. Finally, we experimentally demonstrate that the performance of our algorithm tracks recent information theoretic bounds for exact recovery in the stochastic block model.
@cite_30: Community detection is a fundamental statistical problem in network data analysis. Many algorithms have been proposed to tackle this problem. Most of these algorithms are not guaranteed to achieve the statistical optimality of the problem, while procedures that achieve information theoretic limits for general parameter spaces are not computationally tractable. In this paper, we present a computationally feasible two-stage method that achieves optimal statistical performance in misclassification proportion for stochastic block model under weak regularity conditions. Our two-stage procedure consists of a generic refinement step that can take a wide range of weakly consistent community detection procedures as initializer, to which the refinement stage applies and outputs a community assignment achieving optimal misclassification proportion with high probability. The practical effectiveness of the new algorithm is demonstrated by competitive numerical results.
@cite_18: 
@cite_22: K-means is undoubtedly the most widely used partitional clustering algorithm. Unfortunately, due to its gradient descent nature, this algorithm is highly sensitive to the initial placement of the cluster centers. Numerous initialization methods have been proposed to address this problem. In this paper, we first present an overview of these methods with an emphasis on their computational efficiency. We then compare eight commonly used linear time complexity initialization methods on a large and diverse collection of data sets using various performance criteria. Finally, we analyze the experimental results using non-parametric statistical tests and provide recommendations for practitioners. We demonstrate that popular initialization methods often perform poorly and that there are in fact strong alternatives to these methods.
@cite_33: [1] conjectured the existence of a sharp threshold on model parameters for community detection in sparse random graphs drawn from the stochastic block model. Mossel, Neeman and Sly [2] established the negative part of the conjecture, proving impossibility of non-trivial reconstruction below the threshold. In this work we solve the positive part of the conjecture. To that end we introduce a modified adjacency matrix B which counts self-avoiding paths of a given length e between pairs of nodes. We then prove that for logarithmic length e, the leading eigenvectors of this modified matrix provide a non-trivial reconstruction of the underlying structure, thereby settling the conjecture. A key step in the proof consists in establishing a weak Ramanujan property of the constructed matrix B. Namely, the spectrum of B consists in two leading eigenvalues ρ(B), λ2 and n -- 2 eigenvalues of a lower order O(ne √ρ(B) for all e 0, ρ(B) denoting B's spectral radius.
@cite_32: 
@cite_0: Denote by A the adjacency matrix of an Erdos-Renyi graph with bounded average degree. We consider the problem of maximizing over the set of positive semidefinite matrices X with diagonal entries X_ii=1. We prove that for large (bounded) average degree d, the value of this semidefinite program (SDP) is --with high probability-- 2n*sqrt(d) + n, o(sqrt(d))+o(n). For a random regular graph of degree d, we prove that the SDP value is 2n*sqrt(d-1)+o(n), matching a spectral upper bound. Informally, Erdos-Renyi graphs appear to behave similarly to random regular graphs for semidefinite programming. We next consider the sparse, two-groups, symmetric community detection problem (also known as planted partition). We establish that SDP achieves the information-theoretically optimal detection threshold for large (bounded) degree. Namely, under this model, the vertex set is partitioned into subsets of size n 2, with edge probability a n (within group) and b n (across). We prove that SDP detects the partition with high probability provided (a-b)^2 (4d)> 1+o_d(1), with d= (a+b) 2. By comparison, the information theoretic threshold for detecting the hidden partition is (a-b)^2 (4d)> 1: SDP is nearly optimal for large bounded average degree. Our proof is based on tools from different research areas: (i) A new 'higher-rank' Grothendieck inequality for symmetric matrices; (ii) An interpolation method inspired from statistical physics; (iii) An analysis of the eigenvectors of deformed Gaussian random matrices.
@cite_15: Spectral algorithms are classic approaches to clustering and community detection in networks. However, for sparse networks the standard versions of these algorithms are suboptimal, in some cases completely failing to detect communities even when other algorithms such as belief propagation can do so. Here, we present a class of spectral algorithms based on a nonbacktracking walk on the directed edges of the graph. The spectrum of this operator is much better-behaved than that of the adjacency matrix or other commonly used matrices, maintaining a strong separation between the bulk eigenvalues and the eigenvalues relevant to community structure even in the sparse case. We show that our algorithm is optimal for graphs generated by the stochastic block model, detecting communities all of the way down to the theoretical limit. We also show the spectrum of the nonbacktracking operator for some real-world networks, illustrating its advantages over traditional spectral clustering.
@cite_13: Despite many empirical successes of spectral clustering methods— algorithms that cluster points using eigenvectors of matrices derived from the data—there are several unresolved issues. First. there are a wide variety of algorithms that use the eigenvectors in slightly different ways. Second, many of these algorithms have no proof that they will actually compute a reasonable clustering. In this paper, we present a simple spectral clustering algorithm that can be implemented using a few lines of Matlab. Using tools from matrix perturbation theory, we analyze the algorithm, and give conditions under which it can be expected to do well. We also show surprisingly good experimental results on a number of challenging clustering problems.
@cite_25: Let a k-partition of a graph be a division of the vertices into k disjoint subsets containing m1 ≥ m2,..., ≥mk vertices. Let Ec be the number of edges whose two vertices belong to different subsets. Let λ1 ≥ λ2, ..., ≥ λk, be the k largest eigenvalues of a matrix, which is the sum of the adjacency matrix of the graph plus any diagonal matrix U such that the suomf all the elements of the sum matrix is zero. Then Ec ≥ 1 2Σr=1k-mrλr. A theorem is given that shows the effect of the maximum degree of any node being limited, and it is also shown that the right-hand side is a concave function of U.C omputational studies are madoef the ratio of upper bound to lower bound for the two-partition of a number of random graphs having up to 100 nodes.
Spectral methods as we discuss here stem from work on the Fiedler vector @cite_18 @cite_25 for the two-block case and spectral embeddings coupled with k-means clustering @cite_13 in the multi-block case. For a more comprehensive overview of initialization procedures for k-means see, , @cite_22 . Recent analysis of these methods applied to the SBM @cite_32 @cite_30 focuses on misclassification of nodes. Another line of work considers matrices besides the adjacency matrix or normalized Laplacian to achieve theoretical detection thresholds @cite_15 @cite_33 . Other recent work @cite_0 demonstrates where spectral methods break down and argues for the use of SDP-based methods.