Document clustering for electronic meetings: an experimental comparison of two techniques

Abstract

In this article, we report our implementation and comparison of two text clustering techniques. One is based on Ward's clustering and the other on Kohonen's Self-organizing Maps. We have evaluated how closely clusters produced by a computer resemble those created by human experts. We have also measured the time that it takes for an expert to “clean up” the automatically produced clusters. The technique based on Ward's clustering was found to be more precise. Both techniques have worked equally well in detecting associations between text documents. We used text messages obtained from group brainstorming meetings.