Clustering Using Genetic Algorithm-Based Self-Organising Map

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study of clustering using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. There are 3 methods to be compared, two methods are pure method, called Self Organising Map (SOM) which is branch of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Genetic Algorithm (GA), while one method is hybrid between GA and SOM, called GA-based SOM. SOM is one of the most popular method for cluster analysis. SOM will group objects based on the nearest distance between object and updateable cluster centres. However, there are disadvantages of SOM. Solution quality is depend on initial cluster centres that are generated randomly and cluster centres update algorithm is just based on a delta value without considering the searching direction. Basically, clustering case could be modelled as optimisation case. The objective function is to minimise total distance of all data to their cluster centre. Hence, GA has potentiality to be applied for clustering. Advantage of GA is it has multi searching points in finding the solution and stochastic movement from a phase to the next phase. Therefore, possibility of GA to find global optimum solution will be higher. However, there is still some possibility of GA just find near-optimum solution. The advantage of SOM is the smooth iterative procedure to improve existing cluster centres. Hybridisation of GA and SOM believed could provide better solution. In this study, there are 2 data sets used to test the performance of the three techniques. The study shows that when the solution domain is very wide then SOM and GA-based SOM perform better compared to GA while when the solution domain is not very wide then GA performs better.