22 September 2026 Avec Daichi Kuroda, Matthias Grossglauser, Patrick Thiran 2025
Hierarchical clustering seeks to uncover nested structures in data by constructing a tree of clusters, where deeper levels reveal finer-grained relationships. Traditional methods, including linkage approaches, face three major limitations: (i) they always return a hierarchy, even if none exists, (ii) they are restricted to binary trees, even if the true hierarchy is…
22 September 2026
Despite its ubiquity, clustering lacks a universally accepted definition of what is a cluster. Kleinberg's Impossibility Theorem formalizes this difficulty by showing that no flat clustering method can simultaneously satisfy three natural axioms: scale invariance, richness, and consistency. In this paper, we ask whether this impossibility persists when the output is a hierarchy…
23 January 2026 Avec Lasse Leskelä Statistica Neerlandica, 2026
Markov chains are fundamental models for stochastic dynamics, with applications in a wide range of areas such as population dynamics, queueing systems, reinforcement learning, and Monte Carlo methods. Estimating the transition matrix and stationary distribution from observed sample paths is a core statistical challenge, particularly when multiple independent trajectories are available. While classical…
15 September 2025 Avec Daichi Kuroda, Matthias Grossglauser, Patrick Thiran Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2026
Hierarchical clustering of networks consists in finding a tree of communities, such that lower levels of the hierarchy reveal finer-grained community structures. There are two main classes of algorithms tackling this problem. Divisive (top-down) algorithms recursively partition the nodes into two communities, until a stopping rule indicates that no further split is needed.
08 August 2025 Avec Patrick C. Trindade, Maximilien Dreveton, Daniel R. Figueiredo International Conference on Complex Networks, 2025
Centrality indices, such as closeness and eccentricity, are key to identifying influential nodes within a network, with applications ranging from social and biological networks to communication and transportation systems. However, computing these indices for every node in large graphs is computationally prohibitive due to the need for solving the All-Pairs Shortest Path (APSP)…
18 July 2025 Avec Elaine Siyu Liu, Matthias Grossglauser, Patrick Thiran NeurIPS, 2025
This paper establishes the theoretical limits of graph clustering under the Popularity-Adjusted Block Model (PABM), addressing limitations of existing models. In contrast to the Stochastic Block Model (SBM), which assumes uniform vertex degrees, and to the Degree-Corrected Block Model (DCBM), which applies uniform degree corrections across clusters, PABM introduces separate popularity parameters for…