How would I implement k-means with TensorFlow?

Question

The intro tutorial, which uses the built-in gradient descent optimizer, makes a lot of sense. However, k-means isn't just something I can plug into gradient descent. It seems like I'd have to write my own sort of optimizer, but I'm not quite sure how to do that given the TensorFlow primitives.

What approach should I take?

Answer 1

(note: You can now get a more polished version of this code as a gist on github.)

you can definitely do it, but you need to define your own optimization criteria (for k-means, it's usually a max iteration count and when the assignment stabilizes). Here's an example of how you might do it (there are probably more optimal ways to implement it, and definitely better ways to select the initial points). It's basically like you'd do it in numpy if you were trying really hard to stay away from doing things iteratively in python:

import tensorflow as tf
import numpy as np
import time

N=10000
K=4
MAX_ITERS = 1000

start = time.time()

points = tf.Variable(tf.random_uniform([N,2]))
cluster_assignments = tf.Variable(tf.zeros([N], dtype=tf.int64))

# Silly initialization:  Use the first two points as the starting                
# centroids.  In the real world, do this better.                                 
centroids = tf.Variable(tf.slice(points.initialized_value(), [0,0], [K,2]))

# Replicate to N copies of each centroid and K copies of each                    
# point, then subtract and compute the sum of squared distances.                 
rep_centroids = tf.reshape(tf.tile(centroids, [N, 1]), [N, K, 2])
rep_points = tf.reshape(tf.tile(points, [1, K]), [N, K, 2])
sum_squares = tf.reduce_sum(tf.square(rep_points - rep_centroids),
                            reduction_indices=2)

# Use argmin to select the lowest-distance point                                 
best_centroids = tf.argmin(sum_squares, 1)
did_assignments_change = tf.reduce_any(tf.not_equal(best_centroids,
                                                    cluster_assignments))

def bucket_mean(data, bucket_ids, num_buckets):
    total = tf.unsorted_segment_sum(data, bucket_ids, num_buckets)
    count = tf.unsorted_segment_sum(tf.ones_like(data), bucket_ids, num_buckets)
    return total / count

means = bucket_mean(points, best_centroids, K)

# Do not write to the assigned clusters variable until after                     
# computing whether the assignments have changed - hence with_dependencies
with tf.control_dependencies([did_assignments_change]):
    do_updates = tf.group(
        centroids.assign(means),
        cluster_assignments.assign(best_centroids))

sess = tf.Session()
sess.run(tf.initialize_all_variables())

changed = True
iters = 0

while changed and iters < MAX_ITERS:
    iters += 1
    [changed, _] = sess.run([did_assignments_change, do_updates])

[centers, assignments] = sess.run([centroids, cluster_assignments])
end = time.time()
print ("Found in %.2f seconds" % (end-start)), iters, "iterations"
print "Centroids:"
print centers
print "Cluster assignments:", assignments

(Note that a real implementation would need to be more careful about initial cluster selection, avoiding problem cases with all points going to one cluster, etc. This is just a quick demo. I've updated my answer from earlier to make it a bit more clear and "example-worthy".)