Statistical properties of convex clustering

In this manuscript, we study the statistical properties of convex clustering. We establish that convex clustering is closely related to single linkage hierarchical clustering and k-means clustering. In addition, we derive the range of the tuning parameter for convex clustering that yields a non-trivial solution. We also provide an unbiased estimator of the degrees of freedom, and provide a finite sample bound for the prediction error for convex clustering. We compare convex clustering to some traditional clustering methods in simulation studies.