Engineering topics
Minden, Victor
Publications and source records attributed to Minden, Victor.
Simple, direct and efficient multi-way spectral clustering
Abstract 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. We also experimentally demonstrate that the performance of our algorithm tracks recent information theoretic bounds for exact recovery in the stochastic block model. Finally, we explore the performance of our algorithm when applied to a real-world graph.
A real-space Green’s function method for thenumerical solution of Maxwell’s equations
A new method for solving the transverse part of the free-space Maxwell equations in three dimensions is presented. By taking the Helmholtz decomposition of the electric field and current sources and considering only the divergence-free parts, we obtain an explicit real-space representation for the transverse propagator that explicitly respects finite speed of propagation. Because the propagator involves convolution against a singular distribution, we regularize via convolution with smoothing kernels (B-splines) prior to sampling based on a method due to Beyer and LeVeque (1992). We show that the ultimate discrete convolutional propagator can be constructed to attain an arbitrarily high order of accuracy by using higher-order regularizing kernels and finite difference stencils and that it satisfies von Neumann’s stability condition. Furthermore, the propagator is compactly supported and can be applied using Hockney’s method (1970) and parallelized using the same observation as made by Vay, Haber, and Godfrey (2013), leading to a method that is computationally efficient.