Dynamic Algorithm for Explainable k-medians Clustering under ℓp Norm

We study the problem of explainable k-medians clustering introduced by Dasgupta, Frost, Moshkovitz, and Rashtchian (2020). In this problem, the goal is to construct a threshold decision tree that partitions data into k clusters while minimizing the k-medians objective. These trees are interpretable because each internal node makes a simple decision by thresholding a single feature, allowing users to trace and understand how each point is assigned to a cluster. We present the first algorithm for explainable k-medians under ℓp norm for every finite p 1. Our algorithm achieves an O p(logk)1+1/p 1/p