Statistical properties of convex clustering

Abstract

In this manuscript, we study the statistical properties of convex clustering. We establish that convex clustering is closely related to single linkage hierarchical clustering and $k$-means clustering. In addition, we derive the range of the tuning parameter for convex clustering that yields a non-trivial solution. We also provide an unbiased estimator of the degrees of freedom, and provide a finite sample bound for the prediction error for convex clustering. We compare convex clustering to some traditional clustering methods in simulation studies.