Data Mining:

Concepts and
Techniques
(3rd ed.)

— Chapter 10 —

Jiawei Han, Micheline Kamber, and Jian Pei

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign &
Simon Fraser University
©2011 Han, Kamber & Pei. All rights reserved.
1
 Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods

 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts

 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary
2
 What is Cluster Analysis?
 Cluster: A collection of data objects
 similar (or related) to one another within the same group

 dissimilar (or unrelated) to the objects in other groups

 Cluster analysis (or clustering, data segmentation, …)

 Finding similarities between data according to the

characteristics found in the data and grouping similar

data objects into clusters
 Unsupervised learning: no predefined classes (i.e., learning
by observations vs. learning by examples: supervised)
 Typical applications
 As a stand-alone tool to get insight into data distribution

 As a preprocessing step for other algorithms

3
 Clustering for Data Understanding
and Applications
 Biology: taxonomy of living things: kingdom, phylum, class, order,
family, genus and species
 Information retrieval: document clustering
 Land use: Identification of areas of similar land use in an earth
observation database
 Marketing: Help marketers discover distinct groups in their customer
bases, and then use this knowledge to develop targeted marketing
programs
 City-planning: Identifying groups of houses according to their house
type, value, and geographical location
 Earth-quake studies: Observed earth quake epicenters should be
clustered along continent faults
 Climate: understanding earth climate, find patterns of atmospheric
and ocean
 Economic Science: market resarch
4
 Clustering as a Preprocessing Tool
(Utility)
 Summarization:
 Preprocessing for regression, PCA, classification, and
association analysis
 Compression:
 Image processing: vector quantization
 Finding K-nearest Neighbors
 Localizing search to one or a small number of clusters
 Outlier detection
 Outliers are often viewed as those “far away” from any
cluster

5
 Quality: What Is Good
Clustering?
 A good clustering method will produce high quality
clusters
 high intra-class similarity: cohesive within clusters
 low inter-class similarity: distinctive between clusters
 The quality of a clustering method depends on
 the similarity measure used by the method
 its implementation, and
 Its ability to discover some or all of the hidden patterns

6
 Measure the Quality of
Clustering
 Dissimilarity/Similarity metric
 Similarity is expressed in terms of a distance function,
typically metric: d(i, j)
 The definitions of distance functions are usually rather
different for interval-scaled, boolean, categorical,
ordinal ratio, and vector variables
 Weights should be associated with different variables
based on applications and data semantics
 Quality of clustering:
 There is usually a separate “quality” function that
measures the “goodness” of a cluster.
 It is hard to define “similar enough” or “good enough”

The answer is typically highly subjective
7
 Considerations for Cluster
Analysis
 Partitioning criteria
 Single level vs. hierarchical partitioning (often, multi-level
hierarchical partitioning is desirable)
 Separation of clusters
 Exclusive (e.g., one customer belongs to only one region) vs.
non-exclusive (e.g., one document may belong to more than one
class)
 Similarity measure
 Distance-based (e.g., Euclidian, road network, vector) vs.
connectivity-based (e.g., density or contiguity)
 Clustering space
 Full space (often when low dimensional) vs. subspaces (often in
high-dimensional clustering)
8
 Requirements and Challenges
 Scalability
 Clustering all the data instead of only on samples

 Ability to deal with different types of attributes

 Numerical, binary, categorical, ordinal, linked, and mixture of

these
 Constraint-based clustering
 User may give inputs on constraints

 Use domain knowledge to determine input parameters

 Interpretability and usability

 Others
 Discovery of clusters with arbitrary shape

 Ability to deal with noisy data

 Incremental clustering and insensitivity to input order

 High dimensionality

9
 Major Clustering Approaches
(I)
 Partitioning approach:
 Construct various partitions and then evaluate them by some

criterion, e.g., minimizing the sum of square errors

 Typical methods: k-means, k-medoids, CLARANS

 Hierarchical approach:
 Create a hierarchical decomposition of the set of data (or objects)

using some criterion

 Typical methods: Diana, Agnes, BIRCH, CAMELEON

 Density-based approach:
 Based on connectivity and density functions

 Typical methods: DBSACN, OPTICS, DenClue

 Grid-based approach:
 based on a multiple-level granularity structure

 Typical methods: STING, WaveCluster, CLIQUE

10
 Major Clustering Approaches
(II)
 Model-based:
 A model is hypothesized for each of the clusters and tries to find

the best fit of that model to each other

 Typical methods: EM, SOM, COBWEB

 Frequent pattern-based:
 Based on the analysis of frequent patterns

 Typical methods: p-Cluster

 User-guided or constraint-based:
 Clustering by considering user-specified or application-specific

constraints
 Typical methods: COD (obstacles), constrained clustering

 Link-based clustering:
 Objects are often linked together in various ways

 Massive links can be used to cluster objects: SimRank, LinkClus

11
 Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods

 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts

 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary
12
 Partitioning Algorithms: Basic
Concept
 Partitioning method: Partitioning a database D of n objects into a set of
k clusters, such that the sum of squared distances is minimized (where
ci is the centroid or medoid of cluster Ci)

E  ik1 pCi ( p  ci ) 2
 Given k, find a partition of k clusters that optimizes the chosen
partitioning criterion
 Global optimal: exhaustively enumerate all partitions
 Heuristic methods: k-means and k-medoids algorithms
 k-means (MacQueen’67, Lloyd’57/’82): Each cluster is represented
by the center of the cluster
 k-medoids or PAM (Partition around medoids) (Kaufman &
Rousseeuw’87): Each cluster is represented by one of the objects
in the cluster
13
 The K-Means Clustering Method

 Given k, the k-means algorithm is implemented in four

steps:
 Partition objects into k nonempty subsets
 Compute seed points as the centroids of the
clusters of the current partitioning (the centroid is
the center, i.e., mean point, of the cluster)
 Assign each object to the cluster with the nearest
seed point
 Go back to Step 2, stop when the assignment does
not change

14
 An Example of K-Means Clustering

K=2

Arbitrarily Update
partition the
objects cluster
into k centroids
groups
The initial data Loop if
set Reassign objects
needed
 Partition objects into k nonempty
subsets
 Repeat
 Compute centroid (i.e., mean Update
the
point) for each partition cluster
 Assign each object to the centroids
cluster of its nearest centroid
 Until no change
15
 Variations of the K-Means Method

 Most of the variants of the k-means which differ in

 Selection of the initial k means
 Dissimilarity calculations
 Strategies to calculate cluster means
 Handling categorical data: k-modes
 Replacing means of clusters with modes
 Using new dissimilarity measures to deal with categorical objects
 Using a frequency-based method to update modes of clusters
 A mixture of categorical and numerical data: k-prototype method

16
 What Is the Problem of the K-Means
Method?

 The k-means algorithm is sensitive to outliers !

 Since an object with an extremely large value may substantially
distort the distribution of the data
 K-Medoids: Instead of taking the mean value of the object in a cluster
as a reference point, medoids can be used, which is the most
centrally located object in a cluster

10 10
9 9
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

17
 PAM: A Typical K-Medoids Algorithm
Total Cost = 20
10 10 10

9 9 9

8 8 8

7 7 7

6
Arbitrar 6
Assign 6

5
y 5 each 5

4 choose 4 remaini 4

3
k object 3
ng 3

2
as 2
object 2

1 1
initial to
1

0 0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
medoid 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
nearest 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

s medoid
K=2 s Randomly select a
Total Cost = 26 nonmedoid
object,Oramdom
10 10

Do loop 9

8
Compute
9

8
Swapping 7 total cost 7

Until no O and 6
of 6

Oramdom
change
5 5

4
swapping 4

If quality is 3

2
3

improved. 1 1

0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

18
 The K-Medoid Clustering Method

 K-Medoids Clustering: Find representative objects (medoids) in clusters

 PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids, Kaufmann & Rousseeuw 1987)

Starts from an initial set of medoids and iteratively replaces one
of the medoids by one of the non-medoids if it improves the total
distance of the resulting clustering

PAM works effectively for small data sets, but does not scale
well for large data sets (due to the computational complexity)
 Efficiency improvement on PAM
 CLARA (Kaufmann & Rousseeuw, 1990): PAM on samples
 CLARANS (Ng & Han, 1994): Randomized re-sampling
19
 Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary

20
 Hierarchical Clustering
 Use distance matrix as clustering criteria. This method
does not require the number of clusters k as an input, but
needs a termination condition
Step 0 Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4
agglomerative
(AGNES)
a ab
b abcde
c
cde
d
de
e
divisive
Step 4 Step 3 Step 2 Step 1 Step 0 (DIANA)
21
 AGNES (Agglomerative Nesting)
 Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)
 Implemented in statistical packages, e.g., Splus
 Use the single-link method and the dissimilarity matrix
 Merge nodes that have the least dissimilarity
 Go on in a non-descending fashion
 Eventually all nodes belong to the same cluster
10 10 10

9 9 9

8 8 8

7 7 7

6 6 6

5 5 5

4 4 4

3 3 3

2 2 2

1 1 1

0 0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

22
Dendrogram: Shows How Clusters are
Merged
Decompose data objects into a several levels of nested
partitioning (tree of clusters), called a dendrogram

A clustering of the data objects is obtained by cutting

the dendrogram at the desired level, then each
connected component forms a cluster

23
 DIANA (Divisive Analysis)

 Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)

 Implemented in statistical analysis packages, e.g., Splus
 Inverse order of AGNES
 Eventually each node forms a cluster on its own

10 10
10

9 9
9
8 8
8

7 7
7
6 6
6

5 5
5
4 4
4

3 3
3
2 2
2

1 1
1
0 0
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

24
 Distance between X X

Clusters
 Single link: smallest distance between an element in one cluster and
an element in the other, i.e., dist(K i, Kj) = min(tip, tjq)
 Complete link: largest distance between an element in one cluster
and an element in the other, i.e., dist(K i, Kj) = max(tip, tjq)
 Average: avg distance between an element in one cluster and an
element in the other, i.e., dist(K i, Kj) = avg(tip, tjq)

 Centroid: distance between the centroids of two clusters, i.e., dist(K i,

Kj) = dist(Ci, Cj)

 Medoid: distance between the medoids of two clusters, i.e., dist(K i,

Kj) = dist(Mi, Mj)
 Medoid: a chosen, centrally located object in the cluster
25
 Centroid, Radius and Diameter of a
Cluster (for numerical data sets)
 Centroid: the “middle” of a cluster iN1(t )
Cm  N ip

 Radius: square root of average distance from any point

of the cluster to its centroid  N (t  cm ) 2
Rm  i 1 ip
N
 Diameter: square root of average mean squared
distance between all pairs of points in the cluster
 N  N (t  t ) 2
Dm  i 1 i 1 ip iq
N ( N  1)

26
Extensions to Hierarchical Clustering
 Major weakness of agglomerative clustering methods

Can never undo what was done previously

Do not scale well: time complexity of at least O(n2), where
n is the number of total objects
 Integration of hierarchical & distance-based clustering

BIRCH (1996): uses CF-tree and incrementally adjusts
the quality of sub-clusters

CHAMELEON (1999): hierarchical clustering using
dynamic modeling
27
BIRCH (Balanced Iterative Reducing
and Clustering Using Hierarchies)
 Zhang, Ramakrishnan & Livny, SIGMOD’96
 Incrementally construct a CF (Clustering Feature) tree, a hierarchical
data structure for multiphase clustering
 Phase 1: scan DB to build an initial in-memory CF tree (a multi-level
compression of the data that tries to preserve the inherent clustering
structure of the data)
 Phase 2: use an arbitrary clustering algorithm to cluster the leaf
nodes of the CF-tree
 Scales linearly: finds a good clustering with a single scan and improves
the quality with a few additional scans
 Weakness: handles only numeric data, and sensitive to the order of the
data record

28
 Clustering Feature Vector in BIRCH

Clustering Feature (CF): CF = (N, LS, SS)

N: Number of data points
N
LS: linear sum of N points:  X i
i 1

CF = (5, (16,30),(54,190))
SS: square sum of N points
N 2 10
(3,4)
 Xi
9

(2,6)
8

i 1
7

(4,5)
5

1
(4,7)
(3,8)
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

29
 CF-Tree in BIRCH
 Clustering feature:
 Summary of the statistics for a given subcluster: the 0-th, 1st,

and 2nd moments of the subcluster from the statistical point

of view
 Registers crucial measurements for computing cluster and

utilizes storage efficiently

A CF tree is a height-balanced tree that stores the clustering
features for a hierarchical clustering
 A nonleaf node in a tree has descendants or “children”

 The nonleaf nodes store sums of the CFs of their children

 A CF tree has two parameters

 Branching factor: max # of children

 Threshold: max diameter of sub-clusters stored at the leaf

nodes 30
 The CF Tree Structure
Root

B=7 CF1 CF2 CF3 CF6

L=6 child1 child2 child3 child6

Non-leaf node
CF1 CF2 CF3 CF5
child1 child2 child3 child5

Leaf node Leaf node

prev CF1 CF2 CF6 next prev CF1 CF2 CF4 next

31
 The Birch Algorithm
 Cluster Diameter 1 2
 (x  x )
n( n  1) i j

 For each point in the input

 Find closest leaf entry

 Add point to leaf entry and update CF

 If entry diameter > max_diameter, then split leaf, and possibly

parents
 Algorithm is O(n)
 Concerns
 Sensitive to insertion order of data points

 Since we fix the size of leaf nodes, so clusters may not be so

natural
 Clusters tend to be spherical given the radius and diameter

measures
32
 CHAMELEON: Hierarchical Clustering
Using Dynamic Modeling (1999)
 CHAMELEON: G. Karypis, E. H. Han, and V. Kumar, 1999
 Measures the similarity based on a dynamic model
 Two clusters are merged only if the interconnectivity
and closeness (proximity) between two clusters are
high relative to the internal interconnectivity of the
clusters and closeness of items within the clusters
 Graph-based, and a two-phase algorithm
1. Use a graph-partitioning algorithm: cluster objects into
a large number of relatively small sub-clusters
2. Use an agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm:
find the genuine clusters by repeatedly combining
these sub-clusters
33
 Overall Framework of CHAMELEON

Construct (K-NN)
Sparse Graph Partition the Graph

Data Set

K-NN Graph
P and q are connected if Merge Partition
q is among the top k
closest neighbors of p
Relative interconnectivity:
connectivity of c1 and c2
over internal connectivity
Final Clusters
Relative closeness:
closeness of c1 and c2 over
internal closeness 34
CHAMELEON (Clustering Complex
Objects)

35
Probabilistic Hierarchical Clustering
 Algorithmic hierarchical clustering
 Nontrivial to choose a good distance measure
 Hard to handle missing attribute values
 Optimization goal not clear: heuristic, local search
 Probabilistic hierarchical clustering
 Use probabilistic models to measure distances between clusters
 Generative model: Regard the set of data objects to be clustered
as a sample of the underlying data generation mechanism to be
analyzed
 Easy to understand, same efficiency as algorithmic agglomerative
clustering method, can handle partially observed data
 In practice, assume the generative models adopt common distributions
functions, e.g., Gaussian distribution or Bernoulli distribution, governed
by parameters
36
 Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary

37
 Density-Based Clustering Methods
 Clustering based on density (local cluster criterion), such
as density-connected points

Major features:

Discover clusters of arbitrary shape

Handle noise

One scan

Need density parameters as termination condition
 Several interesting studies:
 DBSCAN: Ester, et al. (KDD’96)

 OPTICS: Ankerst, et al (SIGMOD’99).

 DENCLUE: Hinneburg & D. Keim (KDD’98)

 CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98) (more grid-

based)
38
 Density-Based Clustering: Basic
Concepts
 Two parameters:
 Eps: Maximum radius of the neighbourhood
 MinPts: Minimum number of points in an Eps-
neighbourhood of that point
 NEps(p): {q belongs to D | dist(p,q) ≤ Eps}
 Directly density-reachable: A point p is directly density-
reachable from a point q w.r.t. Eps, MinPts if

p belongs to NEps(q)
p MinPts = 5
 core point condition:
Eps = 1 cm
|NEps (q)| ≥ MinPts q

39
Density-Reachable and Density-Connected
 Density-reachable:
 A point p is density-reachable from p
a point q w.r.t. Eps, MinPts if there p1
is a chain of points p1, …, pn, p1 = q
q, pn = p such that pi+1 is directly
density-reachable from pi
 Density-connected
p q
 A point p is density-connected to a
point q w.r.t. Eps, MinPts if there is
o
a point o such that both, p and q
are density-reachable from o w.r.t.
Eps and MinPts
40
 DBSCAN: Density-Based Spatial
Clustering of Applications with Noise
 Relies on a density-based notion of cluster: A cluster is
defined as a maximal set of density-connected points
 Discovers clusters of arbitrary shape in spatial databases
with noise

Outlier

Border
Eps = 1cm
Core MinPts = 5

41
 DBSCAN: The Algorithm
 Arbitrary select a point p
 Retrieve all points density-reachable from p w.r.t. Eps and
MinPts
 If p is a core point, a cluster is formed
 If p is a border point, no points are density-reachable
from p and DBSCAN visits the next point of the database
 Continue the process until all of the points have been
processed

42
DBSCAN: Sensitive to
Parameters

43
 OPTICS: A Cluster-Ordering Method
(1999)

 OPTICS: Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering

Structure
 Ankerst, Breunig, Kriegel, and Sander (SIGMOD’99)

 Produces a special order of the database wrt its

density-based clustering structure

 This cluster-ordering contains info equiv to the density-

based clusterings corresponding to a broad range of

parameter settings
 Good for both automatic and interactive cluster

analysis, including finding intrinsic clustering structure

 Can be represented graphically or using visualization

techniques
44
 OPTICS: Some Extension from
DBSCAN
 Index-based:

k = number of dimensions

N = 20

p = 75% D

M = N(1-p) = 5
 Complexity: O(NlogN)

 Core Distance:
p1
 min eps s.t. point is core
o
 Reachability Distance
p2 o
Max (core-distance (o), d (o, p)) MinPts = 5
r(p1, o) = 2.8cm. r(p2,o) = 4cm  = 3 cm 45
 Reachability
-distance

undefined


 ‘

Cluster-order
of the objects 46
Density-Based Clustering: OPTICS & Its
Applications

47
 DENCLUE: Using Statistical Density
Functions
 DENsity-based CLUstEring by Hinneburg & Keim (KDD’98)
total influence
 Using statistical density functions: on x

d ( x , xi ) 2
d ( x,y) 2 
( x )  i 1 e
 D N 2
2
f Gaussian ( x , y ) e 2 2 f Gaussian

d ( x , xi ) 2
influence of 
( x, xi )  i 1 ( xi  x) e
D N
2 2
y on x f Gaussian
 Major features
gradient of x
 Solid mathematical foundation in the
direction of xi
 Good for data sets with large amounts of noise
 Allows a compact mathematical description of arbitrarily shaped
clusters in high-dimensional data sets
 Significant faster than existing algorithm (e.g., DBSCAN)
 But needs a large number of parameters
48
 Denclue: Technical Essence
 Uses grid cells but only keeps information about grid cells that do
actually contain data points and manages these cells in a tree-based
access structure
 Influence function: describes the impact of a data point within its
neighborhood
 Overall density of the data space can be calculated as the sum of the
influence function of all data points
 Clusters can be determined mathematically by identifying density
attractors
 Density attractors are local maximal of the overall density function
 Center defined clusters: assign to each density attractor the points
density attracted to it
 Arbitrary shaped cluster: merge density attractors that are connected
through paths of high density (> threshold)

49
Density Attractor

50
Center-Defined and Arbitrary

51
 Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary

52
 Grid-Based Clustering Method

 Using multi-resolution grid data structure

 Several interesting methods
 STING (a STatistical INformation Grid approach) by

Wang, Yang and Muntz (1997)

 WaveCluster by Sheikholeslami, Chatterjee, and
Zhang (VLDB’98)

A multi-resolution clustering approach using
wavelet method
 CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98)

Both grid-based and subspace clustering

53
 STING: A Statistical Information Grid
Approach
 Wang, Yang and Muntz (VLDB’97)
 The spatial area is divided into rectangular cells
 There are several levels of cells corresponding to different
levels of resolution
1st layer

(i-1) st layer

i-th layer

54
 The STING Clustering Method
 Each cell at a high level is partitioned into a number of
smaller cells in the next lower level
 Statistical info of each cell is calculated and stored
beforehand and is used to answer queries
 Parameters of higher level cells can be easily calculated
from parameters of lower level cell
 count, mean, s, min, max

 type of distribution—normal, uniform, etc.

 Use a top-down approach to answer spatial data queries

 Start from a pre-selected layer—typically with a small
number of cells
 For each cell in the current level compute the confidence
interval
55
 CLIQUE (Clustering In QUEst)

 Agrawal, Gehrke, Gunopulos, Raghavan (SIGMOD’98)

 Automatically identifying subspaces of a high dimensional data space
that allow better clustering than original space
 CLIQUE can be considered as both density-based and grid-based
 It partitions each dimension into the same number of equal length
interval
 It partitions an m-dimensional data space into non-overlapping
rectangular units
 A unit is dense if the fraction of total data points contained in the unit
exceeds the input model parameter
 A cluster is a maximal set of connected dense units within a
subspace
56
 CLIQUE: The Major Steps
 Partition the data space and find the number of points that
lie inside each cell of the partition.
 Identify the subspaces that contain clusters using the
Apriori principle
 Identify clusters
 Determine dense units in all subspaces of interests
 Determine connected dense units in all subspaces of
interests.
 Generate minimal description for the clusters
 Determine maximal regions that cover a cluster of

connected dense units for each cluster

 Determination of minimal cover for each cluster

57
 Salary
(10,000)

=3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

20
30
40
50

Sa
l ar
Vacation

y
60
age

30
Vacation
(week)
50
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
20
30
40

age
50
60
age

58
 Strength and Weakness of
CLIQUE

 Strength
 automatically finds subspaces of the highest

dimensionality such that high density clusters exist in

those subspaces
 insensitive to the order of records in input and does not

presume some canonical data distribution

 scales linearly with the size of input and has good

scalability as the number of dimensions in the data

increases
 Weakness
 The accuracy of the clustering result may be degraded

at the expense of simplicity of the method

59
 Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods

 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts

 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary
60
 Assessing Clustering Tendency
 Assess if non-random structure exists in the data by measuring the
probability that the data is generated by a uniform data distribution
 Test spatial randomness by statistic test: Hopkins Static

Given a dataset D regarded as a sample of a random variable o,
determine how far away o is from being uniformly distributed in the
data space
 Sample n points, p , …, p , uniformly from D. For each p , find its
1 n i
nearest neighbor in D: xi = min{dist (pi, v)} where v in D
 Sample n points, q1, …, qn, uniformly from D. For each qi, find its
nearest neighbor in D – {qi}: yi = min{dist (qi, v)} where v in D and v
≠ qi

Calculate the Hopkins Statistic:

 If D is uniformly distributed, ∑ xi and ∑ yi will be close to each other

and H is close to 0.5. If D is highly skewed, H is close to 0
61
 Determine the Number of Clusters
 Empirical method
 # of clusters ≈√n/2 for a dataset of n points

 Elbow method
 Use the turning point in the curve of sum of within cluster variance

w.r.t the # of clusters

 Cross validation method
 Divide a given data set into m parts

 Use m – 1 parts to obtain a clustering model

 Use the remaining part to test the quality of the clustering


E.g., For each point in the test set, find the closest centroid, and
use the sum of squared distance between all points in the test
set and the closest centroids to measure how well the model fits
the test set
 For any k > 0, repeat it m times, compare the overall quality measure

w.r.t. different k’s, and find # of clusters that fits the data the best
62
 Measuring Clustering Quality

 Two methods: extrinsic vs. intrinsic

 Extrinsic: supervised, i.e., the ground truth is available
 Compare a clustering against the ground truth using
certain clustering quality measure
 Ex. BCubed precision and recall metrics
 Intrinsic: unsupervised, i.e., the ground truth is unavailable
 Evaluate the goodness of a clustering by considering
how well the clusters are separated, and how compact
the clusters are
 Ex. Silhouette coefficient
63
 Measuring Clustering Quality: Extrinsic
Methods
 Clustering quality measure: Q(C, Cg), for a clustering C
given the ground truth Cg.
 Q is good if it satisfies the following 4 essential criteria

Cluster homogeneity: the purer, the better

Cluster completeness: should assign objects belong to
the same category in the ground truth to the same
cluster

Rag bag: putting a heterogeneous object into a pure
cluster should be penalized more than putting it into a
rag bag (i.e., “miscellaneous” or “other” category)

Small cluster preservation: splitting a small category
into pieces is more harmful than splitting a large
category into pieces
64
 Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods

 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts

 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary
65
 Summary
 Cluster analysis groups objects based on their similarity and has
wide applications
 Measure of similarity can be computed for various types of data
 Clustering algorithms can be categorized into partitioning methods,
hierarchical methods, density-based methods, grid-based methods,
and model-based methods
 K-means and K-medoids algorithms are popular partitioning-based
clustering algorithms
 Birch and Chameleon are interesting hierarchical clustering
algorithms, and there are also probabilistic hierarchical clustering
algorithms
 DBSCAN, OPTICS, and DENCLU are interesting density-based
algorithms
 STING and CLIQUE are grid-based methods, where CLIQUE is also
a subspace clustering algorithm
 Quality of clustering results can be evaluated in various ways
66