Variable Selection and Outlier Detection for Automated K-means Clustering

Abstract

An important problem in cluster analysis is the selection of variables that define cluster structure that also eliminate noisy variables that mask cluster structure; in addition, outlier detection is a fundamental task for cluster analysis. Here we provide an automated K-means clustering process combined with variable selection and outlier identification. The Automated K-means clustering procedure consists of three processes: (i) automatically calculating the cluster number and initial cluster center whenever a new variable is added, (ii) identifying outliers for each cluster depending on used variables, (iii) selecting variables defining cluster structure in a forward manner. To select variables, we applied VS-KM (variable-selection heuristic for K-means clustering) procedure (Brusco and Cradit, 2001). To identify outliers, we used a hybrid approach combining a clustering based approach and distance based approach. Simulation results indicate that the proposed automated K-means clustering procedure is effective to select variables and identify outliers. The implemented R program can be obtained at http://www.knou.ac.kr/∼sskim/SVOKmeans.r.