Data Clustering: A Review

Data analysis underlies many computing applications, either in a design phase or as part of their on-line operations. Data analysis procedures can be dichotomized as either exploratory or confirmatory, based on the availability of appropriate models for the data source, but a key element in both types of procedures (whether for hypothesis formation or decision-making) is the grouping, or classification of measurements based on either (i) goodness-of-fit to a postulated model, or (ii) natural groupings (clustering) revealed through analysis. Cluster analysis is the organization of a collection of patterns (usually represented as a vector of measurements, or a point in a multidimensional space) into clusters based on similarity. Intuitively, patterns within a valid cluster are more similar to each other than they are to a pattern belonging to a different cluster. An example of clustering is depicted in Figure 1. The input patterns are shown in Figure 1(a), and the desired clusters are shown in Figure 1(b). Here, points belonging to the same cluster are given the same label. The variety of techniques for representing data, measuring proximity (similarity) between data elements, and grouping data elements has produced a rich and often confusing assortment of clustering methods. 数据挖掘研究院
It is important to understand the difference between clustering (unsupervised classification) and discriminant analysis (supervised classification). In supervised classification, we are provided with a collection of labeled (preclassified) patterns; the problem is to label a newly encountered, yet unlabeled, pattern. Typically, the given labeled (training) patterns are used to learn the descriptions of classes which in turn are used to label a new pattern. In the case of clustering, the problem is to group a given collection of unlabeled patterns into meaningful clusters. In a sense, labels are associated with clusters also, but these category labels are data driven; that is, they are obtained solely from the data.   Clustering is useful in several exploratory pattern-analysis, grouping, decision- making, and machine-learning situations, including data mining, document retrieval, image segmentation, and pattern classification. However, in many such problems, there is little prior information (e.g., statistical models) available about the data, and the decision-maker must make as few assumptions about the data as possible. It is under these restrictions that clustering methodology is particularly appropriate for the exploration of interrelationships among the data points to make an assessment (perhaps preliminary) of their structure.

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