Median Consensus Embedding for Dimensionality Reduction

Abstract

This study proposes median consensus embedding (MCE) to address variability in low-dimensional embeddings caused by random initialization in nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques such as $t$-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. MCE is defined as the geometric median of multiple embeddings. By assuming multiple embeddings as independent and identically distributed random samples and applying large deviation theory, we prove that MCE achieves consistency at an exponential rate. Furthermore, we develop a practical algorithm to implement MCE by constructing a distance function between embeddings based on the Frobenius norm of the pairwise distance matrix of data points. Application to actual data demonstrates that MCE converges rapidly and effectively reduces instability. We further combine MCE with multiple imputation to address missing values and consider multiscale hyperparameters. Results confirm that MCE effectively mitigates instability issues in embedding methods arising from random initialization and other sources.