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discoCVI

Implementation of the DISCO Metric for Internal Clustering Evaluation

R implementation of the DISCO (Density-based Internal Score for Clustering Outcomes) metric — a Cluster Validity Index (CVI) for evaluating density-based clustering results, including explicit evaluation of noise point quality. Translated from the original Python reference implementation by Beer, Krieger, Weber et al. (2025).

What’s new in 0.2.0

• Much faster, much less memory, same scores. DISCO is now computed without building any n × n matrix. It is 23 to 138 times faster than 0.1.1 (n = 500 to 4,000), and 100,000 points can be scored in under a minute with about 200 MB of peak memory for the whole R process (0.1.1 needed 1.2 GB for 4,000 points).
• Identical results. Every exported function is tested against the 0.1.1 implementation (tests/testthat); differences are at the level of floating-point rounding (< 1e-14).
• Bug fix. Points in singleton clusters now score 0, as defined in the DISCO paper (0.1.1 gave them 1).
• Compiled code. The minimum spanning tree is built in C++ (Rcpp).

See NEWS.md for details.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Why DISCO?
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Function Reference
• Algorithm
• Performance
• Implementation Notes
• Experimental Results
• File Structure
• Results Interpretation
• Citation

Overview

discoCVI evaluates clustering quality without ground truth labels by using density-connectivity distance (dc-distance) instead of Euclidean distance. It is the first CVI that:

• Handles arbitrary-shaped clusters (not just convex/spherical)
• Explicitly evaluates noise point quality (not just cluster quality)
• Returns bounded, interpretable scores in [−1, 1]

Why DISCO?

Traditional CVIs like Silhouette and Davies-Bouldin assume convex clusters and ignore noise. On non-convex data, they rank the wrong algorithm higher:

DISCO correctly identifies DBSCAN as better on non-convex data.

Installation

# Released version from CRAN
install.packages("discoCVI")

# Development version from GitHub
# install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("aminentezari/discoCVI")

Dependencies (installed automatically): - FNN — fast k-nearest neighbour search - Rcpp — compiled minimum spanning tree (from 0.2.0)

Installing from GitHub compiles C++ code; on macOS this needs the Xcode command line tools (xcode-select --install), on Windows Rtools.

Quick Start

library(discoCVI)
library(dbscan)

# 1. Two concentric circles with a little noise
set.seed(42)
n     <- 300
theta <- runif(n, 0, 2 * pi)
r     <- ifelse(seq_len(n) <= n / 2, 1, 0.4)
X     <- cbind(r * cos(theta), r * sin(theta)) + matrix(rnorm(2 * n, sd = 0.05), ncol = 2)

# 2. Cluster with DBSCAN and with k-means
db_labels <- dbscan(X, eps = 0.2, minPts = 5)$cluster - 1L   # noise 0 -> -1
km_labels <- kmeans(X, centers = 2, nstart = 10)$cluster - 1L

# 3. Evaluate: DBSCAN should score clearly higher
disco_score(X, db_labels)
disco_score(X, km_labels)

# 4. Per-point scores: which points are badly placed?
scores <- disco_samples(X, db_labels)
summary(scores)
which(scores < 0)

Noise labels. DISCO expects noise to be labelled -1. The dbscan package labels noise 0 (both dbscan() and hdbscan()), so convert first: labels <- res$cluster - 1L, or labels[labels == 0] <- -1L.

Function Reference

Core Functions

disco_score(X, labels, min_points = 5)

Returns a single number summarising overall clustering quality.

Returns: Single numeric in [-1, 1].

disco_samples(X, labels, min_points = 5)

Returns per-point scores — useful for identifying problematic points.

scores     <- disco_samples(X, labels)
bad_points <- which(scores < 0)

p_cluster(X, labels, min_points, precomputed_dc_dists)

Silhouette-style scores using dc-distances. -1 is treated as a valid cluster here.

p_noise(X, labels, min_points, dc_dists)

Returns list(p_sparse, p_far) for noise points only.

compute_dc_distances(X, min_points = 5)

Returns the n x n DC-distance matrix directly. Useful for comparing several labelings of the same data, but note that the matrix itself has n² entries; disco_score() and disco_samples() do not need it.

D  <- compute_dc_distances(X)
s1 <- p_cluster(D, labels1, precomputed_dc_dists = TRUE)
s2 <- p_cluster(D, labels2, precomputed_dc_dists = TRUE)

Algorithm

Step 1 - Core Distance

k(x) = d_euclidean(x, x_{min_points-1})

Step 2 - Mutual Reachability Distance

dm(x, y) = max( k(x), k(y), d_euclidean(x, y) )

Step 3 - DC-Distance via MST

dc(x, y) = max edge weight on minimax path x -> y in MST

Step 4 - DISCO Score per Point

Cluster points:

a = mean dc-distance to own cluster (excluding self)
b = min over other clusters of mean dc-distance
p(x) = (b - a) / max(a, b)

Noise points:

p_sparse = (k(n) - k_max(C)) / max(k(n), k_max(C))
p_far    = (dc_min(n,C) - k_max(C)) / max(dc_min(n,C), k_max(C))
p(n)     = min(p_sparse, p_far)

Overall:

DISCO = (1/n) * sum(p(x_i))

Performance

From version 0.2.0, disco_samples() and disco_score() never store an n × n matrix:

1. Core distances come from a k-nearest-neighbour search.
2. The minimum spanning tree of the mutual-reachability graph is built in C++ with Prim’s algorithm, computing each distance only when it is needed.
3. Sorting the tree edges gives the single-linkage merge tree. The dc-distance between two points is exactly the weight of the merge at which they first become connected.
4. One pass over this merge tree accumulates, for every point, the sum and the minimum of its dc-distances to each cluster — everything DISCO needs.

Memory therefore grows linearly with the number of points (times the number of clusters) instead of quadratically. Time is still dominated by the O(n²) spanning tree, but without R loops or large temporary matrices.

Benchmark on synthetic data (3 Gaussian blobs + 5% noise, 2 dimensions; MacBook Pro, Apple M2 Pro, 16 GB, single thread; median of 5 runs, each in a fresh R process; peak memory = maximum resident set size of the whole R process, of which about 67 MB is R itself; energy measured with CodeCarbon, minus an R start-up baseline). Scores of the two versions are identical.

At n = 4,000, version 0.2.0 uses about 0.26 mWh instead of 45 mWh of energy per evaluation. Full results and scripts are in benchmarks/.

Implementation Notes

The original R version (0.1.1) is a line-by-line translation of the Python reference (disco.py + dctree.py). Three issues were found and fixed during the translation:

Bug 1 - Core Distance Off-by-One

Python includes self (dist=0) in k-NN, so effective neighbor is k-1. FNN::get.knn excludes self:

k          <- min_points - 1
knn_result <- FNN::get.knn(X, k = k)
core_dists <- knn_result$nn.dist[, k]

Bug 2 - MST Tie-Breaking

igraph::mst breaks equal-weight edges differently than Python’s Prim. Fixed by porting Python’s exact _get_mst_edges() (dctree.py lines 401-438). (The dc-distances themselves do not depend on how ties are broken, because the largest edge on a path between two points is the same in every minimum spanning tree.)

Bug 3 - K-Means Cross-Language Non-Determinism

R and Python RNGs produce different K-Means partitions from the same seed. Fixed by exporting Python labels as CSV and loading in R:

# Python
pd.DataFrame({"km_label": km.labels_}).to_csv("python_km_labels.csv", index=False)

# R
km_labels <- as.integer(read.csv("python_km_labels.csv")$km_label)

After all fixes, R and Python produce identical scores to 10 decimal places:

DISCO - DBSCAN  : 0.6900921813  (R == Python)
DISCO - K-Means : 0.0270091908  (R == Python)

Bug 4 - Singleton Clusters (fixed in 0.2.0)

The DISCO paper sets the score of a point that forms a cluster on its own to 0 (Section 3, “Edge cases”). Version 0.1.1 returned 1 for such points, because the mean distance to the “rest of its cluster” was taken as 0. Version 0.2.0 follows the paper. Labelings without singleton clusters are not affected.

Version 0.2.0 replaces the matrix-based computation with the merge-tree algorithm described under Performance and is tested to give the same results as 0.1.1 (apart from the singleton fix).

Experimental Results

Eight benchmark datasets validated against the Python reference. All differences are within machine epsilon (< 1e-14).

Note: Negative K-Means scores on Dartboard1 and 3-Spiral are correct and expected — DISCO penalises algorithms that cut through ring or spiral structures.

File Structure

discoCVI/
├── R/
│   ├── disco.R              <- Exported functions and documentation
│   ├── disco_tree.R         <- Fast merge-tree engine (0.2.0)
│   └── RcppExports.R        <- Generated by Rcpp
├── src/
│   ├── prim_mrd.cpp         <- Minimum spanning tree in C++ (0.2.0)
│   └── RcppExports.cpp      <- Generated by Rcpp
├── tests/testthat/          <- Equivalence tests against 0.1.1
├── man/                     <- Generated by devtools::document()
├── benchmarks/              <- Timing, memory and energy benchmarks
├── DESCRIPTION
├── NAMESPACE                <- Generated by devtools::document()
├── NEWS.md
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Results Interpretation

Common Pitfall

# WRONG: dbscan() and hdbscan() use 0 for noise
labels <- dbscan(X, eps = 0.2)$cluster

# CORRECT: DISCO uses -1 for noise
labels <- dbscan(X, eps = 0.2)$cluster - 1L

Citation

@inproceedings{beer2026disco,
  title     = {Internal Evaluation of Density-Based Clusterings with Noise},
  author    = {Beer, Anna and Krieger, Lena and Weber, Pascal and
               Ritzert, Martin and Assent, Ira and Plant, Claudia},
  booktitle = {International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {arXiv:2503.00127}
}

R Package:

Entezari A (2026). discoCVI: Implementation of the DISCO Metric for
Internal Clustering Evaluation. R package version 0.2.0.
https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=discoCVI

License

MIT © Amin Entezari

Original Python implementation by Beer, Krieger, Weber, Ritzert, Assent, Plant (2025).

For questions: amin_entezari@outlook.com

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.