We provide a new interpretation of Hessian locally linear embedding (HLLE), revealing that it is essentially a variant way to implement the same idea of locally linear embedding (LLE). Based on the new interpretation, a substantial simplification can be made, in which the idea of "Hessian" is replaced by rather arbitrary weights. Moreover, we show by numerical examples that HLLE may produce projection-like results when the dimension of the target space is larger than that of the data manifold, and hence one further modification concerning the manifold dimension is suggested. Combining all the observations, we finally achieve a new LLE-type method, which is called tangential LLE (TLLE). It is simpler and more robust than HLLE.

We analyze the performance of a class of manifold-learning algorithms that find their output by minimizing a quadratic form under some normalization constraints. This class consists of Locally Linear Embedding (LLE), Laplacian Eigenmap, Local Tangent Space Alignment (LTSA), Hessian Eigenmaps (HLLE), and Diffusion maps. We present and prove conditions on the manifold that are necessary for the success of the algorithms. Both the finite sample case and the limit case are analyzed. We show that there are simple manifolds in which the necessary conditions are violated, and hence the algorithms cannot recover the underlying manifolds. Finally, we present numerical results that demonstrate our claims.