Data Mining:

Concepts and Techniques

— Chapter 8 —

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 1

 Chapter 8. Cluster Analysis

 What is Cluster Analysis?

 Types of Data in Cluster Analysis
 A Categorization of Major Clustering Methods
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Model-Based Clustering Methods
 Outlier Analysis
 Summary
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 2
 General Applications of Clustering

 Pattern Recognition
 Spatial Data Analysis
 create thematic maps in GIS by clustering feature

spaces
 detect spatial clusters and explain them in spatial data

mining
 Image Processing
 Economic Science (especially market research)
 WWW
 Document classification

 Cluster Weblog data to discover groups of similar

access patterns

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 4

 Examples of Clustering Applications
 Marketing: Help marketers discover distinct groups in their
customer bases, and then use this knowledge to develop
targeted marketing programs
 Land use: Identification of areas of similar land use in an
earth observation database
 Insurance: Identifying groups of motor insurance policy
holders with a high average claim cost
 City-planning: Identifying groups of houses according to
their house type, value, and geographical location
 Earth-quake studies: Observed earth quake epicenters
should be clustered along continent faults
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 5
 What Is Good Clustering?

 A good clustering method will produce high quality

clusters with
 high intra-class similarity
 low inter-class similarity
 The quality of a clustering result depends on both the
similarity measure used by the method and its
implementation.
 The quality of a clustering method is also measured by
its ability to discover some or all of the hidden patterns.

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 6

 Requirements of Clustering in Data
Mining
 Scalability
 Ability to deal with different types of attributes
 Discovery of clusters with arbitrary shape
 Minimal requirements for domain knowledge to
determine input parameters
 Able to deal with noise and outliers
 Insensitive to order of input records
 High dimensionality
 Incorporation of user-specified constraints
 Interpretability and usability
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 7
 Chapter 8. Cluster Analysis

 What is Cluster Analysis?

 Types of Data in Cluster Analysis
 A Categorization of Major Clustering Methods
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Model-Based Clustering Methods
 Outlier Analysis
 Summary
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 8
 Data Structures

 x11 ... x1f ... x1p 

 Data matrix  
 ... ... ... ... ... 
 (two modes) x ... xif ... xip 
 i1 
 ... ... ... ... ... 
x ... xnf ... xnp 
 n1 

 0 
 d(2,1) 
 Dissimilarity matrix  0 
 d(3,1) d ( 3,2) 0 
 (one mode)  
 : : : 
d ( n,1) d ( n,2) ... ... 0

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 9

 Measure the Quality of Clustering

 Dissimilarity/Similarity metric: Similarity is expressed in

terms of a distance function, which is typically metric:
d(i, j)
 There is a separate “quality” function that measures the
“goodness” of a cluster.
 The definitions of distance functions are usually very
different for interval-scaled, boolean, categorical, ordinal
and ratio variables.
 Weights should be associated with different variables
based on applications and data semantics.
 It is hard to define “similar enough” or “good enough”
 the answer is typically highly subjective.
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 10
 Type of data in clustering analysis

 Interval-scaled variables:
 Binary variables:
 Nominal, ordinal, and ratio variables:
 Variables of mixed types:

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 11

 Interval-valued variables

 Standardize data
 Calculate the mean absolute deviation:
s f  1n (| x1 f  m f |  | x2 f  m f | ... | xnf  m f |)

where m f  1n (x1 f  x2 f  ...  xnf )

.

 Calculate the standardized measurement (z-score)

xif  m f
zif  sf

 Using mean absolute deviation is more robust than using

standard deviation

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 12

 Similarity and Dissimilarity Between
Objects

 Distances are normally used to measure the similarity or

dissimilarity between two data objects
 Some popular ones include: Minkowski distance:
d (i, j)  q (| x  x |q  | x  x |q ... | x  x |q )
i1 j1 i2 j2 ip jp
where i = (xi1, xi2, …, xip) and j = (xj1, xj2, …, xjp) are
two p-dimensional data objects, and q is a positive
integer
 If q = 1, d is Manhattan distance
d (i, j) | x  x |  | x  x | ... | x  x |
i1 j1 i2 j 2 ip jp

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 13

 Similarity and Dissimilarity Between
Objects (Cont.)

 If q = 2, d is Euclidean distance:
d (i, j)  (| x  x |2  | x  x |2 ... | x  x |2 )
i1 j1 i2 j2 ip jp
 Properties
 d(i,j)  0
 d(i,i) = 0
 d(i,j) = d(j,i)
 d(i,j)  d(i,k) + d(k,j)
 Also one can use weighted distance, parametric Pearson
product moment correlation, or other disimilarity
measures.

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 14

 Binary Variables
 A contingency table for binary data
Object j
1 0 sum
1 a b a b
Object i 0 c d cd
sum a  c b  d p

 Simple matching coefficient (invariant, if the binary

variable is symmetric): d (i, j)  bc
a bc  d
 Jaccard coefficient (noninvariant if the binary variable is
asymmetric): d (i, j)  bc
a bc
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 15
 Dissimilarity between Binary
Variables
 Example
Name Gender Fever Cough Test-1 Test-2 Test-3 Test-4
Jack M Y N P N N N
Mary F Y N P N P N
Jim M Y P N N N N

 gender is a symmetric attribute

 the remaining attributes are asymmetric binary
 let the values Y and P be set to 1, and the value N be set to 0
01
d ( jack , mary )   0.33
2 01
11
d ( jack , jim )   0.67
111
1 2
d ( jim , mary )   0.75
11 2
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 16
 Nominal Variables

 A generalization of the binary variable in that it can take

more than 2 states, e.g., red, yellow, blue, green
 Method 1: Simple matching
 m: # of matches, p: total # of variables
d (i, j)  p 
p
m

 Method 2: use a large number of binary variables

 creating a new binary variable for each of the M
nominal states

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 17

 Ordinal Variables
 An ordinal variable can be discrete or continuous
 order is important, e.g., rank
 Can be treated like interval-scaled
 replacing x by their rank rif {1,..., M f }
if

 map the range of each variable onto [0, 1] by replacing

i-th object in the f-th variable by
rif 1
zif 
M f 1

 compute the dissimilarity using methods for interval-

scaled variables

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 18

 Ratio-Scaled Variables

 Ratio-scaled variable: a positive measurement on a

nonlinear scale, approximately at exponential scale,
such as AeBt or Ae-Bt
 Methods:
 treat them like interval-scaled variables — not a good
choice! (why?)
 apply logarithmic transformation
yif = log(xif)
 treat them as continuous ordinal data treat their rank as
interval-scaled.
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 19
 Variables of Mixed Types
 A database may contain all the six types of variables
 symmetric binary, asymmetric binary, nominal, ordinal,

interval and ratio.

 One may use a weighted formula to combine their effects.
 pf  1 ij( f ) d ij( f )
d (i, j ) 
 f is binary or nominal:
 pf  1 ij( f )
dij(f) = 0 if xif = xjf , or dij(f) = 1 o.w.
 f is interval-based: use the normalized distance
 f is ordinal or ratio-scaled
 compute ranks rif and
zif  r if 1
 and treat zif as interval-scaledM f 1

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 20

 Chapter 8. Cluster Analysis

 What is Cluster Analysis?

 Types of Data in Cluster Analysis
 A Categorization of Major Clustering Methods
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Model-Based Clustering Methods
 Outlier Analysis
 Summary
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 21
 Major Clustering Approaches

 Partitioning algorithms: Construct various partitions and

then evaluate them by some criterion
 Hierarchy algorithms: Create a hierarchical decomposition
of the set of data (or objects) using some criterion
 Density-based: based on connectivity and density functions
 Grid-based: based on a multiple-level granularity structure
 Model-based: A model is hypothesized for each of the
clusters and the idea is to find the best fit of that model to
each other

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 22

 Chapter 8. Cluster Analysis

 What is Cluster Analysis?

 Types of Data in Cluster Analysis
 A Categorization of Major Clustering Methods
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Model-Based Clustering Methods
 Outlier Analysis
 Summary
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 23
 Partitioning Algorithms: Basic Concept

 Partitioning method: Construct a partition of a database D

of n objects into a set of k clusters
 Given a k, find a partition of k clusters that optimizes the
chosen partitioning criterion
 Global optimal: exhaustively enumerate all partitions
 Heuristic methods: k-means and k-medoids algorithms
 k-means (MacQueen’67): Each cluster is represented
by the center of the cluster
 k-medoids or PAM (Partition around medoids)
(Kaufman & Rousseeuw’87): Each cluster is
represented by one of the objects in the cluster
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 24
 The K-Means Clustering Method

 Given k, the k-means algorithm is implemented in 4

steps:
 Partition objects into k nonempty subsets

 Compute seed points as the centroids of the

clusters of the current partition. The centroid is

the center (mean point) of the cluster.
 Assign each object to the cluster with the nearest

seed point.
 Go back to Step 2, stop when no more new

assignment.

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 25

 The K-Means Clustering Method
 Example
10 10

9 9

8 8

7 7

6 6

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

10 10

9 9

8 8

7 7

6 6

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 26

 Comments on the K-Means Method
 Strength
 Relatively efficient: O(tkn), where n is # objects, k is #
clusters, and t is # iterations. Normally, k, t << n.
 Often terminates at a local optimum. The global optimum
may be found using techniques such as: deterministic
annealing and genetic algorithms
 Weakness
 Applicable only when mean is defined, then what about

categorical data?
 Need to specify k, the number of clusters, in advance

 Unable to handle noisy data and outliers

 Not suitable to discover clusters with non-convex shapes

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 27

 Variations of the K-Means Method
 A few variants of the k-means which differ in
 Selection of the initial k means

 Dissimilarity calculations

 Strategies to calculate cluster means

 Handling categorical data: k-modes (Huang’98)

 Replacing means of clusters with modes

 Using new dissimilarity measures to deal with categorical

objects
 Using a frequency-based method to update modes of

clusters
 A mixture of categorical and numerical data: k-prototype

method
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 28
 The K-Medoids Clustering Method

 Find representative objects, called medoids, in clusters

 PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids, 1987)
 starts from an initial set of medoids and iteratively
replaces one of the medoids by one of the non-
medoids if it improves the total distance of the
resulting clustering
 PAM works effectively for small data sets, but does not
scale well for large data sets
 CLARA (Kaufmann & Rousseeuw, 1990)
 CLARANS (Ng & Han, 1994): Randomized sampling
 Focusing + spatial data structure (Ester et al., 1995)
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 29
 PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids)
(1987)

 PAM (Kaufman and Rousseeuw, 1987), built in Splus

 Use real object to represent the cluster
 Select k representative objects arbitrarily
 For each pair of non-selected object h and selected
object i, calculate the total swapping cost TCih
 For each pair of i and h,
 If TCih < 0, i is replaced by h
 Then assign each non-selected object to the most
similar representative object
 repeat steps 2-3Data
January 10, 2024
until there is no change
Mining: Concepts and Techniques 30
 PAM Clustering: Total swapping cost TCih=jCjih
10 10

9 9
j
8
t 8
t
7 7

5
j 6

4
i h 4
h
3

2
3

2
i
1 1

0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Cjih = d(j, h) - d(j, i) Cjih = 0

10
10

9
9

h
8
8

j
7
7
6
6

5
5 i
i h j
t
4
4

3
3

2
2

1
t
1
0
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

C
January 10, 2024jih CjihTechniques
= d(j, t) - d(j, i) Data Mining: Concepts and = d(j, h) - d(j, t) 31
 CLARA (Clustering Large Applications) (1990)
 CLARA (Kaufmann and Rousseeuw in 1990)
 Built in statistical analysis packages, such as S+
 It draws multiple samples of the data set, applies PAM on
each sample, and gives the best clustering as the output
 Strength: deals with larger data sets than PAM
 Weakness:
 Efficiency depends on the sample size
 A good clustering based on samples will not necessarily
represent a good clustering of the whole data set if the
sample is biased
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 32
 CLARANS (“Randomized” CLARA) (1994)
 CLARANS (A Clustering Algorithm based on Randomized
Search) (Ng and Han’94)
 CLARANS draws sample of neighbors dynamically
 The clustering process can be presented as searching a
graph where every node is a potential solution, that is, a
set of k medoids
 If the local optimum is found, CLARANS starts with new
randomly selected node in search for a new local optimum
 It is more efficient and scalable than both PAM and CLARA
 Focusing techniques and spatial access structures may
further improve its performance (Ester et al.’95)
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 33
 Hierarchical Clustering
 Use distance matrix as clustering criteria. This method
does not require the number of clusters k as an input,
but needs a termination condition
Step 0 Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4
agglomerative
(AGNES)
a ab
b abcde
c
cde
d
de
e
divisive
Step 4 Step 3 Step 2 Step 1 Step 0 (DIANA)
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 34
 AGNES (Agglomerative Nesting)
 Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)
 Implemented in statistical analysis packages, e.g., Splus
 Use the Single-Link method and the dissimilarity matrix.
 Merge nodes that have the least dissimilarity
 Go on in a non-descending fashion
 Eventually all nodes belong to the same cluster
10 10 10

9 9 9

8 8 8

7 7 7

6 6 6

5 5 5

4 4 4

3 3 3

2 2 2

1 1 1

0 0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 35

 A Dendrogram Shows How the
Clusters are Merged Hierarchically

Decompose data objects into a several levels of nested

partitioning (tree of clusters), called a dendrogram.

A clustering of the data objects is obtained by cutting the

dendrogram at the desired level, then each connected
component forms a cluster.

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 36

 DIANA (Divisive Analysis)

 Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)

 Implemented in statistical analysis packages, e.g., Splus
 Inverse order of AGNES
 Eventually each node forms a cluster on its own

10 10
10

9 9
9
8 8
8

7 7
7
6 6
6

5 5
5
4 4
4

3 3
3
2 2
2

1 1
1
0 0
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 37

More on Hierarchical Clustering Methods
 Major weakness of agglomerative clustering methods
 do not scale well: time complexity of at least O(n2),

where n is the number of total objects

 can never undo what was done previously

 Integration of hierarchical with distance-based clustering

 BIRCH (1996): uses CF-tree and incrementally adjusts

the quality of sub-clusters

 CURE (1998): selects well-scattered points from the

cluster and then shrinks them towards the center of the

cluster by a specified fraction
 CHAMELEON (1999): hierarchical clustering using

dynamic modeling
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 38
 BIRCH (1996)
 Birch: Balanced Iterative Reducing and Clustering using
Hierarchies, by Zhang, Ramakrishnan, Livny (SIGMOD’96)
 Incrementally construct a CF (Clustering Feature) tree, a
hierarchical data structure for multiphase clustering
 Phase 1: scan DB to build an initial in-memory CF tree (a
multi-level compression of the data that tries to preserve
the inherent clustering structure of the data)
 Phase 2: use an arbitrary clustering algorithm to cluster
the leaf nodes of the CF-tree
 Scales linearly: finds a good clustering with a single scan and
improves the quality with a few additional scans
 Weakness: handles only numeric data, and sensitive to the
order of the data record.
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 39
 Clustering Feature Vector

Clustering Feature: CF = (N, LS, SS)

N: Number of data points
LS: Ni=1=Xi
SS: Ni=1=Xi2 CF = (5, (16,30),(54,190))
10

9
(3,4)
(2,6)
8

(4,5)
5

1
(4,7)
(3,8)
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 40

 CF Tree Root

B=7 CF1 CF2 CF3 CF6

L=6 child1 child2 child3 child6

Non-leaf node
CF1 CF2 CF3 CF5
child1 child2 child3 child5

Leaf node Leaf node

prev CF1 CF2 CF6 next prev CF1 CF2 CF4 next

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 41

 CURE (Clustering Using
REpresentatives )

 CURE: proposed by Guha, Rastogi & Shim, 1998

 Stops the creation of a cluster hierarchy if a level
consists of k clusters
 Uses multiple representative points to evaluate the
distance between clusters, adjusts well to arbitrary
shaped clusters and avoids single-link effect
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 42
 Drawbacks of Distance-Based
Method

 Drawbacks of square-error based clustering method

 Consider only one point as representative of a cluster
 Good only for convex shaped, similar size and
density, and if k can be reasonably estimated
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 43
 Cure: The Algorithm

 Draw random sample s.

 Partition sample to p partitions with size s/p
 Partially cluster partitions into s/pq clusters
 Eliminate outliers
 By random sampling
 If a cluster grows too slow, eliminate it.
 Cluster partial clusters.
 Label data in disk
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 44
 Data Partitioning and Clustering
 s = 50
 p=2  s/pq = 5
 s/p = 25

y
y y

x
y y

x x
x x
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 45
 Cure: Shrinking Representative Points
y y

x x

 Shrink the multiple representative points towards the

gravity center by a fraction of .
 Multiple representatives capture the shape of the cluster
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 46
 Clustering Categorical Data: ROCK

 ROCK: Robust Clustering using linKs,

by S. Guha, R. Rastogi, K. Shim (ICDE’99).
 Use links to measure similarity/proximity

 Not distance based

 Computational complexity: O( n  nm m  n log n )

2 2
m a
 Basic ideas:
 Similarity function and neighbors: T T
Sim( T , T )  1 2

T T
1 2

Let T1 = {1,2,3}, T2={3,4,5} 1 2

{3} 1
Sim( T 1, T 2)    0.2
{1,2,3,4,5} 5

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 47

 Rock: Algorithm
 Links: The number of common neighbours for
the two points.
{1,2,3}, {1,2,4}, {1,2,5}, {1,3,4}, {1,3,5}
{1,4,5}, {2,3,4}, {2,3,5}, {2,4,5}, {3,4,5}
{1,2,3} 3 {1,2,4}
 Algorithm
 Draw random sample

 Cluster with links

 Label data in disk

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 48

 CHAMELEON

 CHAMELEON: hierarchical clustering using dynamic

modeling, by G. Karypis, E.H. Han and V. Kumar’99
 Measures the similarity based on a dynamic model
 Two clusters are merged only if the interconnectivity

and closeness (proximity) between two clusters are

high relative to the internal interconnectivity of the
clusters and closeness of items within the clusters
 A two phase algorithm
 1. Use a graph partitioning algorithm: cluster objects

into a large number of relatively small sub-clusters

 2. Use an agglomerative hierarchical clustering

algorithm: find the genuine clusters by repeatedly

combining these sub-clusters
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 49
 Overall Framework of CHAMELEON
Construct
Sparse Graph Partition the Graph

Data Set

Merge Partition

Final Clusters

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 50

 Density-Based Clustering Methods
 Clustering based on density (local cluster criterion),
such as density-connected points
 Major features:

Discover clusters of arbitrary shape

Handle noise

One scan

Need density parameters as termination condition
 Several interesting studies:
 DBSCAN: Ester, et al. (KDD’96)

 OPTICS: Ankerst, et al (SIGMOD’99).

 DENCLUE: Hinneburg & D. Keim (KDD’98)

 CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98)

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 51

 Density-Based Clustering: Background
 Two parameters:
 Eps: Maximum radius of the neighbourhood
 MinPts: Minimum number of points in an Eps-
neighbourhood of that point
 NEps(p): {q belongs to D | dist(p,q) <= Eps}
 Directly density-reachable: A point p is directly density-
reachable from a point q wrt. Eps, MinPts if
 1) p belongs to NEps(q)
p MinPts = 5
 2) core point condition: q
Eps = 1 cm
|NEps (q)| >= MinPts
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 52
 Density-Based Clustering: Background (II)

 Density-reachable:
p
 A point p is density-reachable
from a point q wrt. Eps, MinPts if p1
q
there is a chain of points p1, …,
pn, p1 = q, pn = p such that pi+1 is
directly density-reachable from pi
 Density-connected
p q
 A point p is density-connected to a
point q wrt. Eps, MinPts if there is
a point o such that both, p and q o
are density-reachable from o wrt.
Eps and MinPts.
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 53
 DBSCAN: Density Based Spatial
Clustering of Applications with Noise

 Relies on a density-based notion of cluster: A cluster is

defined as a maximal set of density-connected points
 Discovers clusters of arbitrary shape in spatial databases
with noise

Outlier

Border
Eps = 1cm
Core MinPts = 5

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 54

 DBSCAN: The Algorithm

 Arbitrary select a point p

 Retrieve all points density-reachable from p wrt Eps
and MinPts.
 If p is a core point, a cluster is formed.
 If p is a border point, no points are density-reachable
from p and DBSCAN visits the next point of the
database.
 Continue the process until all of the points have been
processed.
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 55
 OPTICS: A Cluster-Ordering Method (1999)

 OPTICS: Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering

Structure
 Ankerst, Breunig, Kriegel, and Sander (SIGMOD’99)

 Produces a special order of the database wrt its

density-based clustering structure

 This cluster-ordering contains info equiv to the

density-based clusterings corresponding to a broad

range of parameter settings
 Good for both automatic and interactive cluster

analysis, including finding intrinsic clustering structure

 Can be represented graphically or using visualization

techniques
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 56
 OPTICS: Some Extension from
DBSCAN
 Index-based:

k = number of dimensions

N = 20

p = 75% D

M = N(1-p) = 5
 Complexity: O(kN2)
 Core Distance p1

o
 Reachability Distance p2 o
Max (core-distance (o), d (o, p))
MinPts = 5
r(p1, o) = 2.8cm. r(p2,o) = 4cm
January 10, 2024  = 3 cm
Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 57
 Reachability
-distance

undefined


 ‘

Cluster-order
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques
of the objects 58
 DENCLUE: using density functions
 DENsity-based CLUstEring by Hinneburg & Keim (KDD’98)
 Major features
 Solid mathematical foundation
 Good for data sets with large amounts of noise
 Allows a compact mathematical description of arbitrarily
shaped clusters in high-dimensional data sets
 Significant faster than existing algorithm (faster than
DBSCAN by a factor of up to 45)
 But needs a large number of parameters

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 59

 Denclue: Technical Essence
 Uses grid cells but only keeps information about grid cells
that do actually contain data points and manages these
cells in a tree-based access structure.
 Influence function: describes the impact of a data point
within its neighborhood.
 Overall density of the data space can be calculated as the
sum of the influence function of all data points.
 Clusters can be determined mathematically by identifying
density attractors.
 Density attractors are local maximal of the overall density
function.

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 60

 Gradient: The steepness of a slope

 Example
d ( x , y )2

f Gaussian ( x , y )  e 2 2

d ( x , xi ) 2

( x )  i 1 e
D N
2 2
f Gaussian
d ( x , xi ) 2

( x, xi )  i 1 ( xi  x)  e
N
f D
Gaussian
2 2

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 61

 Density Attractor

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 62

 Center-Defined and Arbitrary

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 63

 Grid-Based Clustering Method
 Using multi-resolution grid data structure
 Several interesting methods
 STING (a STatistical INformation Grid approach)
by Wang, Yang and Muntz (1997)
 WaveCluster by Sheikholeslami, Chatterjee, and
Zhang (VLDB’98)
 A multi-resolution clustering approach using
wavelet method
 CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98)

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 64

 STING: A Statistical Information
Grid Approach
 Wang, Yang and Muntz (VLDB’97)
 The spatial area area is divided into rectangular cells
 There are several levels of cells corresponding to different
levels of resolution

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 65

 STING: A Statistical Information
Grid Approach (2)
 Each cell at a high level is partitioned into a number of
smaller cells in the next lower level
 Statistical info of each cell is calculated and stored
beforehand and is used to answer queries
 Parameters of higher level cells can be easily calculated from
parameters of lower level cell
 count, mean, s, min, max

 type of distribution—normal, uniform, etc.

 Use a top-down approach to answer spatial data queries

 Start from a pre-selected layer—typically with a small
number of cells
 For each cell in the current level compute the confidence
interval
 STING: A Statistical Information
Grid Approach (3)
 Remove the irrelevant cells from further consideration
 When finish examining the current layer, proceed to
the next lower level
 Repeat this process until the bottom layer is reached
 Advantages:
 Query-independent, easy to parallelize, incremental

update
 O(K), where K is the number of grid cells at the

lowest level
 Disadvantages:
 All the cluster boundaries are either horizontal or

vertical, and no diagonal boundary is detected

 WaveCluster (1998)
 Sheikholeslami, Chatterjee, and Zhang (VLDB’98)
 A multi-resolution clustering approach which applies
wavelet transform to the feature space
 A wavelet transform is a signal processing
technique that decomposes a signal into different
frequency sub-band.
 Both grid-based and density-based
 Input parameters:
 # of grid cells for each dimension
 the wavelet, and the # of applications of wavelet
transform.
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 68
 WaveCluster (1998)
 How to apply wavelet transform to find clusters
 Summaries the data by imposing a multidimensional
grid structure onto data space
 These multidimensional spatial data objects are

represented in a n-dimensional feature space

 Apply wavelet transform on feature space to find the

dense regions in the feature space

 Apply wavelet transform multiple times which result

in clusters at different scales from fine to coarse

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 70

 What Is Wavelet (2)?

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 71

 Quantization

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 72

 Transformation

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 73

 WaveCluster (1998)
 Why is wavelet transformation useful for clustering
 Unsupervised clustering

It uses hat-shape filters to emphasize region where

points cluster, but simultaneously to suppress weaker
information in their boundary
 Effective removal of outliers

 Multi-resolution

 Cost efficiency

 Major features:
 Complexity O(N)

 Detect arbitrary shaped clusters at different scales

 Not sensitive to noise, not sensitive to input order

 Only applicable to low dimensional data

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 74
 CLIQUE (Clustering In QUEst)
 Agrawal, Gehrke, Gunopulos, Raghavan (SIGMOD’98).
 Automatically identifying subspaces of a high dimensional
data space that allow better clustering than original space
 CLIQUE can be considered as both density-based and grid-
based
 It partitions each dimension into the same number of
equal length interval
 It partitions an m-dimensional data space into non-
overlapping rectangular units
 A unit is dense if the fraction of total data points
contained in the unit exceeds the input model parameter
 A cluster is a maximal set of connected dense units
within a subspace
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 75
 CLIQUE: The Major Steps
 Partition the data space and find the number of points that
lie inside each cell of the partition.
 Identify the subspaces that contain clusters using the
Apriori principle
 Identify clusters:
 Determine dense units in all subspaces of interests
 Determine connected dense units in all subspaces of
interests.
 Generate minimal description for the clusters
 Determine maximal regions that cover a cluster of

connected dense units for each cluster

 Determination of minimal cover for each cluster

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 76

 Vacation
(10,000)

(week)
Salary

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

age age
20 30 40 50 60 20 30 40 50 60

=3
Vacation

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l ar 30 50
Sa age

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 77

 Strength and Weakness of CLIQUE

 Strength
 It automatically finds subspaces of the highest

dimensionality such that high density clusters exist in

those subspaces
 It is insensitive to the order of records in input and

does not presume some canonical data distribution

 It scales linearly with the size of input and has good

scalability as the number of dimensions in the data

increases
 Weakness
 The accuracy of the clustering result may be

degraded at the expense of simplicity of the method

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 78
 Model-Based Clustering Methods
 Attempt to optimize the fit between the data and some
mathematical model
 Statistical and AI approach
 Conceptual clustering

 A form of clustering in machine learning

 Produces a classification scheme for a set of unlabeled objects
 Finds characteristic description for each concept (class)
 COBWEB (Fisher’87)
 A popular a simple method of incremental conceptual learning
 Creates a hierarchical clustering in the form of a classification
tree
 Each node refers to a concept and contains a probabilistic
description of that concept
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 79
 COBWEB Clustering Method

A classification tree

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 80

 More on Statistical-Based Clustering
 Limitations of COBWEB
 The assumption that the attributes are independent

of each other is often too strong because correlation

may exist
 Not suitable for clustering large database data –

skewed tree and expensive probability distributions

 CLASSIT
 an extension of COBWEB for incremental clustering

of continuous data
 suffers similar problems as COBWEB

 AutoClass (Cheeseman and Stutz, 1996)

 Uses Bayesian statistical analysis to estimate the

number of clusters
 Popular in industry

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 81

 Other Model-Based Clustering
Methods
 Neural network approaches
 Represent each cluster as an exemplar, acting as a

“prototype” of the cluster

 New objects are distributed to the cluster whose

exemplar is the most similar according to some

dostance measure
 Competitive learning
 Involves a hierarchical architecture of several units

(neurons)
 Neurons compete in a “winner-takes-all” fashion for

the object currently being presented

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 82

 Model-Based Clustering Methods

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 83

 Self-organizing feature maps (SOMs)

 Clustering is also performed by having several

units competing for the current object
 The unit whose weight vector is closest to the
current object wins
 The winner and its neighbors learn by having
their weights adjusted
 SOMs are believed to resemble processing that
can occur in the brain
 Useful for visualizing high-dimensional data in
2- or 3-D space

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 84

 What Is Outlier Discovery?
 What are outliers?
 The set of objects are considerably dissimilar from

the remainder of the data

 Example: Sports: Michael Jordon, Wayne

Gretzky, ...
 Problem
 Find top n outlier points

 Applications:
 Credit card fraud detection

 Telecom fraud detection

 Customer segmentation

 Medical analysis

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 85

 Outlier Discovery:
Statistical Approaches

 Assume a model underlying distribution that generates

data set (e.g. normal distribution)
 Use discordancy tests depending on
 data distribution

 distribution parameter (e.g., mean, variance)

 number of expected outliers

 Drawbacks
 most tests are for single attribute

 In many cases, data distribution may not be known

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 86

 Outlier Discovery: Distance-
Based Approach

 Introduced to counter the main limitations imposed by

statistical methods
 We need multi-dimensional analysis without knowing

data distribution.
 Distance-based outlier: A DB(p, D)-outlier is an object O
in a dataset T such that at least a fraction p of the
objects in T lies at a distance greater than D from O
 Algorithms for mining distance-based outliers
 Index-based algorithm

 Nested-loop algorithm

 Cell-based algorithm
 Outlier Discovery: Deviation-
Based Approach
 Identifies outliers by examining the main characteristics
of objects in a group
 Objects that “deviate” from this description are
considered outliers
 sequential exception technique
 simulates the way in which humans can distinguish
unusual objects from among a series of supposedly
like objects
 OLAP data cube technique
 uses data cubes to identify regions of anomalies in
large multidimensional data
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 88
 Problems and Challenges

 Considerable progress has been made in scalable

clustering methods
 Partitioning: k-means, k-medoids, CLARANS
 Hierarchical: BIRCH, CURE
 Density-based: DBSCAN, CLIQUE, OPTICS
 Grid-based: STING, WaveCluster
 Model-based: Autoclass, Denclue, Cobweb
 Current clustering techniques do not address all the
requirements adequately
 Constraint-based clustering analysis: Constraints exist in
data space (bridges and highways) or in user queries
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 89
 Constraint-Based Clustering Analysis

 Clustering analysis: less parameters but more user-desired

constraints, e.g., an ATM allocation problem

January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 90

 Summary

 Cluster analysis groups objects based on their similarity

and has wide applications
 Measure of similarity can be computed for various types
of data
 Clustering algorithms can be categorized into partitioning
methods, hierarchical methods, density-based methods,
grid-based methods, and model-based methods
 Outlier detection and analysis are very useful for fraud
detection, etc. and can be performed by statistical,
distance-based or deviation-based approaches
 There are still lots of research issues on cluster analysis,
such as constraint-based clustering
January 10, 2024 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques 91