Fully Dynamic k-Means Coreset in Near-Optimal Update Time

Abstract

We study in this paper the problem of maintaining a solution to $k$-median and $k$-means clustering in a fully dynamic setting. To do so, we present an algorithm to efficiently maintain a coreset, a compressed version of the dataset, that allows easy computation of a clustering solution at query time. Our coreset algorithm has near-optimal update time of $\tilde{O}(k)$ in general metric spaces, which reduces to $\tilde{O}(d)$ in the Euclidean space ${\mathbb{R}}^d$. The query time is $O(k^2)$ in general metrics, and $O(kd)$ in ${\mathbb{R}}^d$. To maintain a constant-factor approximation for $k$-median and $k$-means clustering in Euclidean space, this directly leads to an algorithm update time $\tilde{O}(d)$, and query time $\tilde{O}(kd+k^2)$. To maintain a $O(polylogk)$-approximation, the query time is reduced to $\tilde{O}(kd)$.

To appear at ESA 2024