The majority of learning tasks faced by data scientists involve relational data, yet most standard algorithms for standard learning problems are not designed to accept relational data as input. The standard practice to address this issue is to join the relational data to create the type of geometric input that standard learning algorithms expect. Unfortunately, this standard practice has exponential worst-case time and space complexity. This leads us to consider what we call the Relational Learning Question: ``Which standard learning algorithms can be efficiently implemented on relational data, and for those that can not, is there an alternative algorithm that can be efficiently implemented on relational data and that has similar performance guarantees to the standard algorithm?'' In this paper, we address the relational learning question for two well-known algorithms for the standard k-means clustering problem. We first show that the  k-means+ + algorithm can be efficiently implemented on relational data . In contrast, we show that the adaptive k-means algorithm likely can not be efficiently implemented on relational data, as this would imply P = \#P. However, we show that a slight variation of this adaptive k-means algorithm can be efficiently implemented on relational data, and that this alternative algorithmhas the same performance guarantee as the original algorithm , that is that it outputs an O(1)-approximate sketch .
This paper gives a k-means approximation algorithm that is efficient in the relational algorithms model. This is an algorithm that operates directly on a relational database without performing a join to convert it to a matrix whose rows represent the data points. The running time is potentially exponentially smaller than N, the number of data points to be clustered that the relational database represents. Few relational algorithms are known and this paper offers techniques for designing relational algorithms as well as characterizing their limitations. We show that given two data points as cluster centers, if we cluster points according to their closest centers, it is NP-Hard to approximate the number of points in the clusters on a general relational input. This is trivial for conventional data inputs and this result exemplifies that standard algorithmic techniques may not be directly applied when designing an efficient relational algorithm. This paper then introduces a new method that leverages rejection sampling and the k-means+ + algorithm to construct an O(1)-approximate k-means solution .
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The majority of learning tasks faced by data scientists involve relational data, yet most standard algorithms for standard learning problems are not designed to accept relational data as input. The standard practice to address this issue is to join the relational data to create the type of geometric input that standard learning algorithms expect. Unfortunately, this standard practice has exponential worst-case time and space complexity. This leads us to consider what we call the Relational Learning Question: ``Which standard learning algorithms can be efficiently implemented on relational data, and for those that can not, is there an alternative algorithm that can be efficiently implemented on relational data and that has similar performance guarantees to the standard algorithm?'' In this paper, we address the relational learning question for two well-known algorithms for the standard
This paper gives a
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clustering problem. We first show that
approximation algorithm that is efficient in the relational algorithms model. This is an algorithm that operates directly on a relational database without performing a join to convert it to a matrix whose rows represent the data points. The running time is potentially exponentially smaller than N,
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number of data points to be clustered that the relational database represents. Few relational algorithms are known and this paper offers techniques for designing relational algorithms as well as characterizing their limitations. We show that given two data points as cluster centers, if we cluster points according to their closest centers, it is NP-Hard to approximate the number of points in the clusters on a general relational input. This is trivial for conventional data inputs and this result exemplifies that standard algorithmic techniques may not be directly applied when designing an efficient relational algorithm. This paper then introduces a new method that leverages rejection sampling and the
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+ algorithm can be efficiently implemented on relational data . In contrast, we show that the adaptive k-means algorithm likely can not be efficiently implemented on relational data, as this would imply P = \#P. However, we show that a slight variation of this adaptive k-means algorithm can be efficiently implemented on relational data, and that this alternative algorithmhas the same performance guarantee as the original algorithm , that is that it outputs
+ algorithm to construct
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sketch
k-means solution