Academic literature on the topic 'Fuzzy clustering algorithm'

Clustering algorithms are widely used in pattern recognition and data mining applications. Due to their computational efficiency, partitional clustering algorithms are better suited for applications with large datasets than hierarchical clustering algorithms. K-means is among the most popular partitional clustering algorithm, but has a major shortcoming: it is extremely sensitive to the choice of initial centers used to seed the algorithm. Unless k-means is carefully initialized, it converges to an inferior local optimum and results in poor quality partitions. Developing improved method for selecting initial centers for k-means is an active area of research. Genetic algorithms (GAs) have been successfully used to evolve a good set of initial centers. Among the most promising GA-based methods are those that exchange neighboring centers between candidate partitions in their crossover operations. K-means is best suited to work when datasets have well-separated non-overlapping clusters. Fuzzy c-means (FCM) is a popular variant of k-means that is designed for applications when clusters are less well-defined. Rather than assigning each point to a unique cluster, FCM determines the degree to which each point belongs to a cluster. Like k-means, FCM is also extremely sensitive to the choice of initial centers. Building on GA-based methods for initial center selection for k-means, this dissertation developed an evolutionary program for center selection in FCM called FCMGA. The proposed algorithm utilized region-based crossover and other mechanisms to improve the GA. To evaluate the effectiveness of FCMGA, three independent experiments were conducted using real and simulated datasets. The results from the experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and consistency of the proposed algorithm in identifying better quality solutions than extant methods. Moreover, the results confirmed the effectiveness of region-based crossover in enhancing the search process for the GA and the convergence speed of FCM. Taken together, findings in these experiments illustrate that FCMGA was successful in solving the problem of initial center selection in partitional clustering algorithms.

Notre capacité grandissante à collecter et stocker des données a fait de l'apprentissage non supervisé un outil indispensable qui permet la découverte de structures et de modèles sous-jacents aux données, sans avoir à \étiqueter les individus manuellement. Parmi les différentes approches proposées pour aborder ce type de problème, le clustering est très certainement le plus répandu. Le clustering suppose que chaque groupe, également appelé cluster, est distribué autour d'un centre défini en fonction des valeurs qu'il prend pour l'ensemble des variables. Cependant, dans certaines applications du monde réel, et notamment dans le cas de données de dimension importante, cette hypothèse peut être invalidée. Aussi, les algorithmes de co-clustering ont-ils été proposés: ils décrivent les groupes d'individus par un ou plusieurs sous-ensembles de variables au regard de leur pertinence. La structure des données finalement obtenue est composée de blocs communément appelés co-clusters. Dans les deux premiers chapitres de cette thèse, nous présentons deux approches de co-clustering permettant de différencier les variables pertinentes du bruit en fonction de leur capacité \`a révéler la structure latente des données, dans un cadre probabiliste d'une part et basée sur la notion de métrique, d'autre part. L'approche probabiliste utilise le principe des modèles de mélanges, et suppose que les variables non pertinentes sont distribuées selon une loi de probabilité dont les paramètres sont indépendants de la partition des données en cluster. L'approche métrique est fondée sur l'utilisation d'une distance adaptative permettant d'affecter à chaque variable un poids définissant sa contribution au co-clustering. D'un point de vue théorique, nous démontrons la convergence des algorithmes proposés en nous appuyant sur le théorème de convergence de Zangwill. Dans les deux chapitres suivants, nous considérons un cas particulier de structure en co-clustering, qui suppose que chaque sous-ensemble d'individus et décrit par un unique sous-ensemble de variables. La réorganisation de la matrice originale selon les partitions obtenues sous cette hypothèse révèle alors une structure de blocks homogènes diagonaux. Comme pour les deux contributions précédentes, nous nous plaçons dans le cadre probabiliste et métrique. L'idée principale des méthodes proposées est d'imposer deux types de contraintes : (1) nous fixons le même nombre de cluster pour les individus et les variables; (2) nous cherchons une structure de la matrice de données d'origine qui possède les valeurs maximales sur sa diagonale (par exemple pour le cas des données binaires, on cherche des blocs diagonaux majoritairement composés de valeurs 1, et de 0 à l’extérieur de la diagonale). Les approches proposées bénéficient des garanties de convergence issues des résultats des chapitres précédents. Enfin, pour chaque chapitre, nous dérivons des algorithmes permettant d'obtenir des partitions dures et floues. Nous évaluons nos contributions sur un large éventail de données simulées et liées a des applications réelles telles que le text mining, dont les données peuvent être binaires ou continues. Ces expérimentations nous permettent également de mettre en avant les avantages et les inconvénients des différentes approches proposées. Pour conclure, nous pensons que cette thèse couvre explicitement une grande majorité des scénarios possibles découlant du co-clustering flou et dur, et peut être vu comme une généralisation de certaines approches de biclustering populaires<br>With the increasing number of data available, unsupervised learning has become an important tool used to discover underlying patterns without the need to label instances manually. Among different approaches proposed to tackle this problem, clustering is arguably the most popular one. Clustering is usually based on the assumption that each group, also called cluster, is distributed around a center defined in terms of all features while in some real-world applications dealing with high-dimensional data, this assumption may be false. To this end, co-clustering algorithms were proposed to describe clusters by subsets of features that are the most relevant to them. The obtained latent structure of data is composed of blocks usually called co-clusters. In first two chapters, we describe two co-clustering methods that proceed by differentiating the relevance of features calculated with respect to their capability of revealing the latent structure of the data in both probabilistic and distance-based framework. The probabilistic approach uses the mixture model framework where the irrelevant features are assumed to have a different probability distribution that is independent of the co-clustering structure. On the other hand, the distance-based (also called metric-based) approach relied on the adaptive metric where each variable is assigned with its weight that defines its contribution in the resulting co-clustering. From the theoretical point of view, we show the global convergence of the proposed algorithms using Zangwill convergence theorem. In the last two chapters, we consider a special case of co-clustering where contrary to the original setting, each subset of instances is described by a unique subset of features resulting in a diagonal structure of the initial data matrix. Same as for the two first contributions, we consider both probabilistic and metric-based approaches. The main idea of the proposed contributions is to impose two different kinds of constraints: (1) we fix the number of row clusters to the number of column clusters; (2) we seek a structure of the original data matrix that has the maximum values on its diagonal (for instance for binary data, we look for diagonal blocks composed of ones with zeros outside the main diagonal). The proposed approaches enjoy the convergence guarantees derived from the results of the previous chapters. Finally, we present both hard and fuzzy versions of the proposed algorithms. We evaluate our contributions on a wide variety of synthetic and real-world benchmark binary and continuous data sets related to text mining applications and analyze advantages and inconvenients of each approach. To conclude, we believe that this thesis covers explicitly a vast majority of possible scenarios arising in hard and fuzzy co-clustering and can be seen as a generalization of some popular biclustering approaches

Notre capacité grandissante à collecter et stocker des données a fait de l'apprentissage non supervisé un outil indispensable qui permet la découverte de structures et de modèles sous-jacents aux données, sans avoir à \étiqueter les individus manuellement. Parmi les différentes approches proposées pour aborder ce type de problème, le clustering est très certainement le plus répandu. Le clustering suppose que chaque groupe, également appelé cluster, est distribué autour d'un centre défini en fonction des valeurs qu'il prend pour l'ensemble des variables. Cependant, dans certaines applications du monde réel, et notamment dans le cas de données de dimension importante, cette hypothèse peut être invalidée. Aussi, les algorithmes de co-clustering ont-ils été proposés: ils décrivent les groupes d'individus par un ou plusieurs sous-ensembles de variables au regard de leur pertinence. La structure des données finalement obtenue est composée de blocs communément appelés co-clusters. Dans les deux premiers chapitres de cette thèse, nous présentons deux approches de co-clustering permettant de différencier les variables pertinentes du bruit en fonction de leur capacité \`a révéler la structure latente des données, dans un cadre probabiliste d'une part et basée sur la notion de métrique, d'autre part. L'approche probabiliste utilise le principe des modèles de mélanges, et suppose que les variables non pertinentes sont distribuées selon une loi de probabilité dont les paramètres sont indépendants de la partition des données en cluster. L'approche métrique est fondée sur l'utilisation d'une distance adaptative permettant d'affecter à chaque variable un poids définissant sa contribution au co-clustering. D'un point de vue théorique, nous démontrons la convergence des algorithmes proposés en nous appuyant sur le théorème de convergence de Zangwill. Dans les deux chapitres suivants, nous considérons un cas particulier de structure en co-clustering, qui suppose que chaque sous-ensemble d'individus et décrit par un unique sous-ensemble de variables. La réorganisation de la matrice originale selon les partitions obtenues sous cette hypothèse révèle alors une structure de blocks homogènes diagonaux. Comme pour les deux contributions précédentes, nous nous plaçons dans le cadre probabiliste et métrique. L'idée principale des méthodes proposées est d'imposer deux types de contraintes : (1) nous fixons le même nombre de cluster pour les individus et les variables; (2) nous cherchons une structure de la matrice de données d'origine qui possède les valeurs maximales sur sa diagonale (par exemple pour le cas des données binaires, on cherche des blocs diagonaux majoritairement composés de valeurs 1, et de 0 à l’extérieur de la diagonale). Les approches proposées bénéficient des garanties de convergence issues des résultats des chapitres précédents. Enfin, pour chaque chapitre, nous dérivons des algorithmes permettant d'obtenir des partitions dures et floues. Nous évaluons nos contributions sur un large éventail de données simulées et liées a des applications réelles telles que le text mining, dont les données peuvent être binaires ou continues. Ces expérimentations nous permettent également de mettre en avant les avantages et les inconvénients des différentes approches proposées. Pour conclure, nous pensons que cette thèse couvre explicitement une grande majorité des scénarios possibles découlant du co-clustering flou et dur, et peut être vu comme une généralisation de certaines approches de biclustering populaires<br>With the increasing number of data available, unsupervised learning has become an important tool used to discover underlying patterns without the need to label instances manually. Among different approaches proposed to tackle this problem, clustering is arguably the most popular one. Clustering is usually based on the assumption that each group, also called cluster, is distributed around a center defined in terms of all features while in some real-world applications dealing with high-dimensional data, this assumption may be false. To this end, co-clustering algorithms were proposed to describe clusters by subsets of features that are the most relevant to them. The obtained latent structure of data is composed of blocks usually called co-clusters. In first two chapters, we describe two co-clustering methods that proceed by differentiating the relevance of features calculated with respect to their capability of revealing the latent structure of the data in both probabilistic and distance-based framework. The probabilistic approach uses the mixture model framework where the irrelevant features are assumed to have a different probability distribution that is independent of the co-clustering structure. On the other hand, the distance-based (also called metric-based) approach relied on the adaptive metric where each variable is assigned with its weight that defines its contribution in the resulting co-clustering. From the theoretical point of view, we show the global convergence of the proposed algorithms using Zangwill convergence theorem. In the last two chapters, we consider a special case of co-clustering where contrary to the original setting, each subset of instances is described by a unique subset of features resulting in a diagonal structure of the initial data matrix. Same as for the two first contributions, we consider both probabilistic and metric-based approaches. The main idea of the proposed contributions is to impose two different kinds of constraints: (1) we fix the number of row clusters to the number of column clusters; (2) we seek a structure of the original data matrix that has the maximum values on its diagonal (for instance for binary data, we look for diagonal blocks composed of ones with zeros outside the main diagonal). The proposed approaches enjoy the convergence guarantees derived from the results of the previous chapters. Finally, we present both hard and fuzzy versions of the proposed algorithms. We evaluate our contributions on a wide variety of synthetic and real-world benchmark binary and continuous data sets related to text mining applications and analyze advantages and inconvenients of each approach. To conclude, we believe that this thesis covers explicitly a vast majority of possible scenarios arising in hard and fuzzy co-clustering and can be seen as a generalization of some popular biclustering approaches

Multiple-centered clustering method and decision making system algorithm on menopause data set depending on multiple-centered clustering are described in this study. This method consists of two stages. At the first stage, fuzzy C-means (FCM) clustering algorithm is applied on the data set under consideration with a high number of cluster centers. As the output of FCM, cluster centers and membership function values for each data member is calculated. At the second stage, original cluster centers obtained in the first stage are merged till the new numbers of clusters are reached. Merging process relies upon a &ldquo<br>similarity measure&rdquo<br>between clusters defined in the thesis. During the merging process, the cluster center coordinates do not change but the data members in these clusters are merged in a new cluster. As the output of this method, therefore, one obtains clusters which include many cluster centers. In the final part of this study, an application of the clustering algorithms &ndash<br>including the multiple centered clustering method &ndash<br>a decision making system is constructed using a special data on menopause treatment. The decisions are based on the clusterings created by the algorithms already discussed in the previous chapters of the thesis. A verification of the decision making system / v decision aid system is done by a team of experts from the Department of Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Hacettepe University under the guidance of Prof. Sinan Beksa&ccedil<br>.

Current studies of the highly complex pathobiology and molecular signatures of human disease require the analysis of large sets of high-throughput data, from clinical to genetic expression experiments, containing a wide range of information types. A number of computational techniques are used to analyse such high-dimensional bioinformatics data. In this thesis we focus on the development of a novel soft clustering technique, DifFUZZY, a fuzzy clustering algorithm applicable to a larger class of problems than other soft clustering approaches. This method is better at handling datasets that contain clusters that are curved, elongated or are of different dispersion. We show how DifFUZZY outperforms a number of frequently used clustering algorithms using a number of examples of synthetic and real datasets. Furthermore, a quality measure based on the diffusion distance developed for DifFUZZY is presented, which is employed to automate the choice of its main parameter. We later apply DifFUZZY and other techniques to data from a clinical study of children from The Gambia with different types of severe malaria. The first step was to identify the most informative features in the dataset which allowed us to separate the different groups of patients. This led to us reproducing the World Health Organisation classification for severe malaria syndromes and obtaining a reduced dataset for further analysis. In order to validate these features as relevant for malaria across the continent and not only in The Gambia, we used a larger dataset for children from different sites in Sub-Saharan Africa. With the use of a novel network visualisation algorithm, we identified pathobiological clusters from which we made and subsequently verified clinical hypotheses. We finish by presenting conclusions and future directions, including image segmentation and clustering time-series data. We also suggest how we could bridge data modelling with bioinformatics by embedding microarray data into cell models. Towards this end we take as a case study a multiscale model of the intestinal crypt using a cell-vertex model.

This thesis presents a fuzzy association based data fusion algorithm for U.S. Coast Guard Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) systems to reduce the number of redundant target tracks displayed to vessel traffic operators. The proposed algorithm uses the Fuzzy Clustering Means (FCM) algorithm to reduce the number of target tracks and associate duplicate tracks by determining the degree of membership for each target track. The algorithm uses current sensor data and the known sensor resolutions for measurement-to-measurement association and the selection of the most accurate sensor for tracking fused targets. Actual vessel traffic data collected from U.S. Coast Guard VTS systems are used for simulation and analysis of the algorithm. The results exhibit successful fusion of correlated tracks and selection of the most accurate sensor resulting in a reduced number of tracks displayed to the VTS operator.