Improving Spectral Clustering using the Asymptotic Value of the Normalised Cut

Abstract

Spectral clustering is a popular and versatile clustering method based on a relaxation of the normalised graph cut objective. Despite its popularity, however, there is no single agreed upon method for tuning the important scaling parameter, nor for determining automatically the number of clusters to extract. Popular heuristics exist, but corresponding theoretical results are scarce. In this paper we investigate the asymptotic value of the normalised cut for an increasing sample assumed to arise from an underlying probability distribution, and based on this result provide recommendations for improving spectral clustering methodology. A corresponding algorithm is proposed with strong empirical performance.