.. _clustering: Clustering ========== .. currentmodule:: dask_ml.cluster .. autosummary:: KMeans SpectralClustering The :mod:`dask_ml.cluster` module implements several algorithms for clustering unlabeled data. Spectral Clustering ------------------- Spectral Clustering finds a low-dimensional embedding on the affinity matrix between samples. The embedded dataset is then clustered, typically with KMeans. Typically, spectral clustering algorithms do not scale well. Computing the :math:`n\_samples \times n\_samples` affinity matrix becomes prohibitively expensive when the number of samples is large. Several algorithms have been proposed to work around this limitation. In ``dask-ml``, we use the Nyström method to approximate the large affinity matrix. This involves sampling ``n_components`` rows from the entire training set. The exact affinity is computed for this subset ( :math:`n\_components \times n\_components` ), and between this small subset and the rest of the data ( :math:`n\_components \times (n\_samples - n\_components)` ). We avoid the direct computation of the rest of the affinity matrix. Let :math:`S` be our :math:`n \times n` affinity matrix. We can rewrite that as .. math:: S_d = \left[ \begin{array}\ A & B \\ B^T & C \\ \end{array} \right] Where :math:`A` is the :math:`n \times n` affinity matrix of the :math:`n\_components` that we sampled, and :math:`B` is the :math:`n \times (n - n\_components)` affinity matrix between the sample and the rest of the dataset. Instead of computing :math:`C` directly, we approximate it with :math:`B^T A^{-1} B`. See the `spectral clustering benchmark`_ for an example showing how :class:`dask_ml.cluster.SpectralClustering` scales in the number of samples. .. _spectral clustering benchmark: http://dask-ml-benchmarks.readthedocs.io/en/latest/auto_examples/plot_spectral_clustering.html