Research article

Selective inference after convex clustering with ℓ₁ penalization

Received: 26 July 2024
Revised: 17 February 2025
Accepted: 27 February 2025

Abstract

Classical inference methods notoriously fail when applied to data-driven test hypotheses or inference targets. Instead, dedicated methodologies are required to obtain statistical guarantees for these selective inference problems. Selective inference is particularly relevant post-clustering, typically when testing a difference in mean between two clusters. In this paper, we address convex clustering with ℓ₁  penalization, by leveraging related selective inference tools for regression, based on Gaussian vectors conditioned to polyhedral sets. In the one-dimensional case, we prove a polyhedral characterization of obtaining given clusters, that enables us to introduce a test procedure with statistical guarantees. This characterization also allows us to provide a computationally efficient regularization path algorithm. Then, we extend the above test procedure and guarantees to multi-dimensional clustering with ℓ₁  penalization, and also to more general multi-dimensional clusterings that aggregate one-dimensional ones. With various numerical experiments, we validate our statistical guarantees and study the power of our methods to detect differences in mean between clusters. Our methods are implemented in the R package poclin.