Average Sensitivity of Euclidean k-Clustering

Neural Information Processing Systems 

Given a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, the goal of Euclidean $(k,\ell)$-clustering is to find $k$ centers that minimize the sum of the $\ell$-th powers of the Euclidean distance of each point to the closest center. In practical situations, the clustering result must be stable against points missing in the input data so that we can make trustworthy and consistent decisions. To address this issue, we consider the average sensitivity of Euclidean $(k,\ell)$-clustering, which measures the stability of the output in total variation distance against deleting a random point from the input data.