Feature-reduction Fuzzy c-means Clustering for Basketball Players Positioning

Abstract

One of the best-known clustering methods is the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm, besides k-means and hierarchical clustering. Since FCM treats all data features as equally important, it may obtain a poor clustering result. To solve the problem, feature selection with feature weighting is needed. Besides feature selection by assigning feature weights, there is also feature selection by assigning feature weights and eliminating the unrelated feature(s). THE Feature-reduction FCM (FRFCM) clustering algorithm can improve the FCM clustering result by weighting the features and discarding the unrelated feature(s) during the clustering process. Basketball is one of the famous sports, both international and national. There are five players in basketball, each with a different position. A player can generally be in guard, forward, or center position. Those three general positions need different characteristics of players’ physical conditions. In this paper, FRFCM is used to select the related physical feature(s) for basketball players, consisting of height, weight, age, and body mass index. to determine the basketball players’ position. The result shows that FRFCM can be applied to determine the basketball players’ position, where the most related physical feature is the player’s height. FRFCM gets one incorrect player’s position, so the error rate is 0.0435. As a comparison, FCM gets five incorrect player’s positions, with an error rate of 0.2174. This method can help the coach decide the basketball new player’s position.