KDD2024

Expander Hierarchies for Normalized Cuts on Graphs

Kathrin Hanauer, Monika Henzinger, Robin Münk, Harald Räcke, Maximilian Vötsch

Abstract

Expander decompositions of graphs have significantly advanced the understanding of many classical graph problems and led to numerous fundamental theoretical results. However, their adoption in practice has been hindered due to their inherent intricacies and large hidden factors in their asymptotic running times. Here, we introduce the first practically efficient algorithm for computing expander decompositions and their hierarchies and demonstrate its effectiveness and utility by incorporating it as the core component in a novel solver for the normalized cut graph clustering objective.