A Comparative Evaluation of Initialization Strategies for K-Means Clustering with Swarm Intelligence Algorithms

Abstract

Clustering is a fundamental data analysis task that presents challenges. Choosing proper initialization centroid techniques is critical to the success of clustering algorithms, such as k-means. The current work investigates six established methods (random, Forgy, k-means++, PCA, hierarchical clustering, and naive sharding) and three innovative swarm intelligence-based approaches—Spider Monkey Optimization (SMO), Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO)—for k-means clustering (SMOKM, WOAKM, and GWOKM). The results on ten well-known datasets strongly favor swarm intelligence-based techniques, with SMOKM consistently outperforming WOAKM and GWOKM. This finding provides critical insights into selecting and evaluating centroid techniques in k-means clustering. The current work is valuable because it provides guidance for those seeking optimal solutions for clustering diverse datasets. Swarm intelligence, especially SMOKM, effectively generates distinct and well-separated clusters, which is valuable in resource-constrained settings. The research also sheds light on the performance of traditional methods such as hierarchical clustering, PCA, and k-means++, which, while promising for specific datasets, consistently underperform swarm intelligence-based alternatives. In conclusion, the current work contributes essential insights into selecting and evaluating initialization centroid techniques for k-means clustering. It highlights the superiority of swarm intelligence, particularly SMOKM, and provides actionable guidance for addressing various clustering challenges.