Enhancement of the Classification Performance of Fuzzy C-Means through Uncertainty Reduction with Cloud Model Interpolation

Abstract

As an information granulation technology, clustering plays a pivotal role in unsupervised learning, serving as a fundamental cornerstone for various data mining techniques. The effective and accurate classification of data is a central focus for numerous researchers. For a dataset, we assert that the classification performance of a clustering method is significantly influenced by uncertain data, particularly those situated at the cluster boundaries. It is evident that uncertain data encapsulate richer information compared with others. Generally, the greater the uncertainty, the more information the data holds. Therefore, conducting a comprehensive analysis of this particular subset of data carries substantial significance. This study presents an approach to characterize data distribution properties using fuzzy clustering and defines the boundary and non-boundary characteristics (certainty and uncertainty) of the data. To improve the classification performance, the strategy focuses on reducing the uncertainty associated with boundary data. The proposed scheme involves inserting data points with the cloud computing technology based on the distribution characteristics of the membership functions to diminish the uncertainty of uncertain data. Building upon this, the contribution of boundary data is reassigned to the prototype in order to diminish the proportion of uncertain data. Subsequently, the classifier is optimized through data label (classification error) supervision. Ultimately, the objective is to leverage clustering algorithms for classification, thereby enhancing overall classification accuracy. Experimental results substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.