Rough ISODATA Algorithm

Abstract

Cluster analysis is a branch of data mining, which plays a vital role in bringing out hidden information in databases. Clustering algorithms help medical researchers in identifying the presence of natural subgroups in a data set. Different types of clustering algorithms are available in the literature. The most popular among them is k-means clustering. Even though k-means clustering is a popular clustering method widely used, its application requires the knowledge of the number of clusters present in the given data set. Several solutions are available in literature to overcome this limitation. The k-means clustering method creates a disjoint and exhaustive partition of the data set. However, in some situations one can come across objects that belong to more than one cluster. In this paper, a clustering algorithm capable of producing rough clusters automatically without requiring the user to give as input the number of clusters to be produced. The efficiency of the algorithm in detecting the number of clusters present in the data set has been studied with the help of some real life data sets. Further, a nonparametric statistical analysis on the results of the experimental study has been carried out in order to analyze the efficiency of the proposed algorithm in automatic detection of the number of clusters in the data set with the help of rough version of Davies-Bouldin index.