Statistical Inference for Cluster Trees

Understand

A cluster tree provides a highly-interpretable summary of a density function by representing the hierarchy of its high-density clusters.

• It is estimated using the empirical tree, which is the cluster tree constructed from a density estimator.
• This paper addresses the basic question of quantifying our uncertainty by assessing the statistical significance of topological features of an empirical cluster tree.
• We first study a variety of metrics that can be used to compare different trees, analyze their properties and assess their suitability for inference.