An ant colony approach for clustering

An Improved Pigeon-Inspired Optimization for Clustering Analysis Problems

Clustering is an important technology in data mining, which attempts to partition a set of objects into clusters based on the values of their attributes. [Formula: see text]-means is a simple and efficient data clustering algorithm. However, it highly depends on the initial solution and is extremely easy to be trapped in local optima. In contrast, meta-heuristic algorithms show good performance to break through the local optima obstacle. In this paper, we propose an improved pigeon-inspired optimization (IPIO) algorithm towards resolving this problem. The algorithm uses an object-based initialization method to generate the initial population and introduces a parametric control strategy to navigate the flying direction. Meanwhile, the climb process of monkey algorithm (MA) with dimension by dimension improvement is adopted to strengthen the local search ability. In this paper, experiments over six real datasets are conducted to validate the effectiveness of IPIO. The experimental results show that IPIO is an efficient alternative in resolving the clustering analysis problem.

On Combining Nature-Inspired Algorithms for Data Clustering

This chapter proposed different hybrid clustering methods based on combining particle swarm optimization (PSO), gravitational search algorithm (GSA) and free parameters central force optimization (CFO) with each other and with the k-means algorithm. The proposed methods were applied on 5 real datasets from the university of California, Irvine (UCI) machine learning repository. Comparative analysis was done in terms of three measures; the sum of intra cluster distances, the running time and the distances between the clusters centroids. The initial population for the used algorithms were enhanced to minimize the sum of intra cluster distances. Experimental results show that, increasing the number of iterations doesn't have a noticeable impact on the sum of intra cluster distances while it has a negative impact on the running time. K-means combined with GSA (KM-GSA), PSO combined with GSA (PSO-GSA) gave the best performance according to the sum of intra cluster distances while K-means combined with PSO (KM-PSO) and KM-GSA were the best in terms of the running time. Finally, KM-GSA and GSA have the best performance.

Grey Wolf Algorithm-Based Clustering Technique

The main problem of classical clustering technique is that it is easily trapped in the local optima. An attempt has been made to solve this problem by proposing the grey wolf algorithm (GWA)-based clustering technique, called GWA clustering (GWAC), through this paper. The search capability of GWA is used to search the optimal cluster centers in the given feature space. The agent representation is used to encode the centers of clusters. The proposed GWAC technique is tested on both artificial and real-life data sets and compared to six well-known metaheuristic-based clustering techniques. The computational results are encouraging and demonstrate that GWAC provides better values in terms of precision, recall, G-measure, and intracluster distances. GWAC is further applied for gene expression data set and its performance is compared to other techniques. Experimental results reveal the efficiency of the GWAC over other techniques.

An Efficient Hybrid Clustering Method Using an Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm and Mantegna Lévy Distribution

Data clustering is a common data mining techniques used in many applications such as data analysis and pattern recognition. K-means algorithm is the common clustering method which has fallen into the trap of local optimization and does not always create the optimized response to the problem, although having more advantages such as high speed. Artificial bee colony (ABC) is a novel biological-inspired optimization algorithm, having the advantage of less control parameters, strong global optimization ability and easy to implement. However, there are still some problems in ABC algorithm, like inability to find the best solution from all possible solutions. Due to the large step of searching equation in ABC, the chance of skipping the true solution is high. Therefore, in this paper, to balance the diversity and convergence ability of the ABC, Mantegna Lévy distribution random walk is proposed and incorporated with ABC. The new algorithm, ABCL, brings the power of the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm to the K-means algorithm. The proposed algorithm benefits from Mantegna Lévy distribution to promote the ABC algorithm in solving the number of functional evaluation and also obtaining better convergence speed and high accuracy in a short time. We empirically evaluate the performance of our proposed method on nine standard datasets taken from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has ability to obtain better results in terms of convergence speed, accuracy, and reducing the number of functional evaluation.

Convalescing Cluster Configuration Using a Superlative Framework

Competent data mining methods are vital to discover knowledge from databases which are built as a result of enormous growth of data. Various techniques of data mining are applied to obtain knowledge from these databases. Data clustering is one such descriptive data mining technique which guides in partitioning data objects into disjoint segments. K-means algorithm is a versatile algorithm among the various approaches used in data clustering. The algorithm and its diverse adaptation methods suffer certain problems in their performance. To overcome these issues a superlative algorithm has been proposed in this paper to perform data clustering. The specific feature of the proposed algorithm is discretizing the dataset, thereby improving the accuracy of clustering, and also adopting the binary search initialization method to generate cluster centroids. The generated centroids are fed as input to K-means approach which iteratively segments the data objects into respective clusters. The clustered results are measured for accuracy and validity. Experiments conducted by testing the approach on datasets from the UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository evidently show that the accuracy and validity measure is higher than the other two approaches, namely, simple K-means and Binary Search method. Thus, the proposed approach proves that discretization process will improve the efficacy of descriptive data mining tasks.

Accelerated Simplified Swarm Optimization with Exploitation Search Scheme for Data Clustering

Data clustering is commonly employed in many disciplines. The aim of clustering is to partition a set of data into clusters, in which objects within the same cluster are similar and dissimilar to other objects that belong to different clusters. Over the past decade, the evolutionary algorithm has been commonly used to solve clustering problems. This study presents a novel algorithm based on simplified swarm optimization, an emerging population-based stochastic optimization approach with the advantages of simplicity, efficiency, and flexibility. This approach combines variable vibrating search (VVS) and rapid centralized strategy (RCS) in dealing with clustering problem. VVS is an exploitation search scheme that can refine the quality of solutions by searching the extreme points nearby the global best position. RCS is developed to accelerate the convergence rate of the algorithm by using the arithmetic average. To empirically evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, experiments are examined using 12 benchmark datasets, and corresponding results are compared with recent works. Results of statistical analysis indicate that the proposed algorithm is competitive in terms of the quality of solutions.

An Efficient Optimization Method for Solving Unsupervised Data Classification Problems

Unsupervised data classification (or clustering) analysis is one of the most useful tools and a descriptive task in data mining that seeks to classify homogeneous groups of objects based on similarity and is used in many medical disciplines and various applications. In general, there is no single algorithm that is suitable for all types of data, conditions, and applications. Each algorithm has its own advantages, limitations, and deficiencies. Hence, research for novel and effective approaches for unsupervised data classification is still active. In this paper a heuristic algorithm, Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO) algorithm, was adapted for data clustering problems by modifying the main operators of BBO algorithm, which is inspired from the natural biogeography distribution of different species. Similar to other population-based algorithms, BBO algorithm starts with an initial population of candidate solutions to an optimization problem and an objective function that is calculated for them. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm assessment was carried on six medical and real life datasets and was compared with eight well known and recent unsupervised data classification algorithms. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed evolutionary optimization algorithm is efficient for unsupervised data classification.

A novel artificial bee colony based clustering algorithm for categorical data

Data with categorical attributes are ubiquitous in the real world. However, existing partitional clustering algorithms for categorical data are prone to fall into local optima. To address this issue, in this paper we propose a novel clustering algorithm, ABC-K-Modes (Artificial Bee Colony clustering based on K-Modes), based on the traditional k-modes clustering algorithm and the artificial bee colony approach. In our approach, we first introduce a one-step k-modes procedure, and then integrate this procedure with the artificial bee colony approach to deal with categorical data. In the search process performed by scout bees, we adopt the multi-source search inspired by the idea of batch processing to accelerate the convergence of ABC-K-Modes. The performance of ABC-K-Modes is evaluated by a series of experiments in comparison with that of the other popular algorithms for categorical data.

A novel clustering algorithm inspired by membrane computing

P systems are a class of distributed parallel computing models; this paper presents a novel clustering algorithm, which is inspired from mechanism of a tissue-like P system with a loop structure of cells, called membrane clustering algorithm. The objects of the cells express the candidate centers of clusters and are evolved by the evolution rules. Based on the loop membrane structure, the communication rules realize a local neighborhood topology, which helps the coevolution of the objects and improves the diversity of objects in the system. The tissue-like P system can effectively search for the optimal partitioning with the help of its parallel computing advantage. The proposed clustering algorithm is evaluated on four artificial data sets and six real-life data sets. Experimental results show that the proposed clustering algorithm is superior or competitive to k-means algorithm and several evolutionary clustering algorithms recently reported in the literature.

Recent Advances in Support Vector Clustering: Theory and Applications

As an important boundary-based clustering algorithm, support vector clustering (SVC) can benefit many real applications owing to its capability of handling arbitrary cluster shapes, especially those directly or indirectly related to pattern exploration and description. As the application deepens, the importance of performance (i.e. criterions of accuracy and efficiency) of SVC increases. To identify gaps in the current methods and propose novel research directions for SVC, we present a survey of the literature in this area. Our approach is to classify the most recent advances into either theory or application. For theoretical contributions, advances related to parameter selection and optimization, dual-problem solutions, and cluster labeling are introduced. We also simultaneously summarize the advantages and drawbacks of each study. With respect to applications, we clearly describe eight groups of schemes based on SVC, either as individual or hybrid methods. Finally, we identify the gaps in SVC research and suggest several future research issues and trends.

Artificial Immune Optimization Algorithm

Artificial immune system (AIS) is a paradigm inspired by processes and metaphors of natural immune system (NIS). There is a rapidly growing interest in AIS approaches to machine learning and especially in the domain of optimization. Of particular interest is the way human body responds to diseases and pathogens as well as adapts to remain immune for long periods after a disease has been combated. In this chapter, we are presenting a novel multilayered natural immune system (NIS) inspired algorithms in the domain of optimization. The proposed algorithm uses natural immune system components such as B-cells, Memory cells and Antibodies; and processes such as negative clonal selection and affinity maturation to find multiple local optimum points. Another benefit this algorithm presents is the presence of immunological memory that is in the form of specific memory cells which keep track of previously explored solutions. The algorithm is evaluated on two well-known numeric functions to demonstrate the applicability.

A hybrid monkey search algorithm for clustering analysis

Clustering is a popular data analysis and data mining technique. The k-means clustering algorithm is one of the most commonly used methods. However, it highly depends on the initial solution and is easy to fall into local optimum solution. In view of the disadvantages of the k-means method, this paper proposed a hybrid monkey algorithm based on search operator of artificial bee colony algorithm for clustering analysis and experiment on synthetic and real life datasets to show that the algorithm has a good performance than that of the basic monkey algorithm for clustering analysis.