Dataset Information

Combined Mapping of Multiple clUsteriNg ALgorithms (COMMUNAL): A Robust Method for Selection of Cluster Number, K.

ABSTRACT: In order to discover new subsets (clusters) of a data set, researchers often use algorithms that perform unsupervised clustering, namely, the algorithmic separation of a dataset into some number of distinct clusters. Deciding whether a particular separation (or number of clusters, K) is correct is a sort of 'dark art', with multiple techniques available for assessing the validity of unsupervised clustering algorithms. Here, we present a new technique for unsupervised clustering that uses multiple clustering algorithms, multiple validity metrics, and progressively bigger subsets of the data to produce an intuitive 3D map of cluster stability that can help determine the optimal number of clusters in a data set, a technique we call COmbined Mapping of Multiple clUsteriNg ALgorithms (COMMUNAL). COMMUNAL locally optimizes algorithms and validity measures for the data being used. We show its application to simulated data with a known K, and then apply this technique to several well-known cancer gene expression datasets, showing that COMMUNAL provides new insights into clustering behavior and stability in all tested cases. COMMUNAL is shown to be a useful tool for determining K in complex biological datasets, and is freely available as a package for R.

SUBMITTER: Sweeney TE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4652212 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Combined Mapping of Multiple clUsteriNg ALgorithms (COMMUNAL): A Robust Method for Selection of Cluster Number, K.

Sweeney Timothy E TE Chen Albert C AC Gevaert Olivier O

Scientific reports 20151119

In order to discover new subsets (clusters) of a data set, researchers often use algorithms that perform unsupervised clustering, namely, the algorithmic separation of a dataset into some number of distinct clusters. Deciding whether a particular separation (or number of clusters, K) is correct is a sort of 'dark art', with multiple techniques available for assessing the validity of unsupervised clustering algorithms. Here, we present a new technique for unsupervised clustering that uses multipl ...[more]

PMID: 26581809

Similar Datasets

Project description:The Shipboard Automatic Identification System (AIS) is crucial for navigation safety and maritime surveillance, data mining and pattern analysis of AIS information have attracted considerable attention in terms of both basic research and practical applications. Clustering of spatio-temporal AIS trajectories can be used to identify abnormal patterns and mine customary route data for transportation safety. Thus, the capacities of navigation safety and maritime traffic monitoring could be enhanced correspondingly. However, trajectory clustering is often sensitive to undesirable outliers and is essentially more complex compared with traditional point clustering. To overcome this limitation, a multi-step trajectory clustering method is proposed in this paper for robust AIS trajectory clustering. In particular, the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), a similarity measurement method, is introduced in the first step to measure the distances between different trajectories. The calculated distances, inversely proportional to the similarities, constitute a distance matrix in the second step. Furthermore, as a widely-used dimensional reduction method, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is exploited to decompose the obtained distance matrix. In particular, the top k principal components with above 95% accumulative contribution rate are extracted by PCA, and the number of the centers k is chosen. The k centers are found by the improved center automatically selection algorithm. In the last step, the improved center clustering algorithm with k clusters is implemented on the distance matrix to achieve the final AIS trajectory clustering results. In order to improve the accuracy of the proposed multi-step clustering algorithm, an automatic algorithm for choosing the k clusters is developed according to the similarity distance. Numerous experiments on realistic AIS trajectory datasets in the bridge area waterway and Mississippi River have been implemented to compare our proposed method with traditional spectral clustering and fast affinity propagation clustering. Experimental results have illustrated its superior performance in terms of quantitative and qualitative evaluations.

Dataset Information

Combined Mapping of Multiple clUsteriNg ALgorithms (COMMUNAL): A Robust Method for Selection of Cluster Number, K.

Publications

Combined Mapping of Multiple clUsteriNg ALgorithms (COMMUNAL): A Robust Method for Selection of Cluster Number, K.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets