Data Mining Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts and Algorithms Lecture Notes for Chapter 8 Introduction to Data Mining by Tan, Steinbach, Kumar © Tan,Steinbach, Kumar Introduction to Data Mining 4/18/2004 1

What is Cluster Analysis? Finding groups of objects such that the objects in a group will be similar (or related) to one another and different from (or unrelated to) the objects in other groups Inter-cluster distances are maximized Intra-cluster distances are minimized

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

Applications of Cluster Analysis Understanding Group related documents for browsing, group genes and proteins that have similar functionality, or group stocks with similar price fluctuations Summarization Reduce the size of large data sets Clustering precipitation in Australia

Requirements of Clustering in Data Mining Scalability Ability to deal with different types of attributes Ability to handle dynamic data 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

Measure the Quality of Clustering Dissimilarity/Similarity metric: Similarity is expressed in terms of a distance function, 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 ratio, and vector 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.

Data Structures Data matrix Dissimilarity matrix (two modes) (one mode)

Type of data in clustering analysis Interval-scaled variables Binary variables Nominal, ordinal, and ratio variables Variables of mixed types

Interval-valued variables Standardize data Calculate the mean absolute deviation: where Calculate the standardized measurement (z-score) Using mean absolute deviation is more robust than using standard deviation

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: 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

Similarity and Dissimilarity Between Objects (Cont.) If q = 2, d is Euclidean distance: 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

Binary Variables A contingency table for binary data Object i Object j A contingency table for binary data Distance measure for symmetric binary variables: Distance measure for asymmetric binary variables: Jaccard coefficient (similarity measure for asymmetric binary variables):

Dissimilarity between Binary Variables Example 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

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 Method 2: use a large number of binary variables creating a new binary variable for each of the M nominal states

Ordinal Variables An ordinal variable can be discrete or continuous Order is important, e.g., rank Can be treated like interval-scaled replace xif by their rank map the range of each variable onto [0, 1] by replacing i-th object in the f-th variable by compute the dissimilarity using methods for interval-scaled variables

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?—the scale can be distorted) apply logarithmic transformation yif = log(xif) treat them as continuous ordinal data treat their rank as interval- scaled

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 f is binary or nominal: dij(f) = 0 if xif = xjf , or dij(f) = 1 otherwise f is interval-based: use the normalized distance f is ordinal or ratio-scaled compute ranks rif and and treat zif as interval-scaled

Vector Objects Vector objects: keywords in documents, gene features in micro-arrays, etc. Broad applications: information retrieval, biologic taxonomy, etc. Cosine measure A variant: Tanimoto coefficient

Types of Clusterings A clustering is a set of clusters Important distinction between hierarchical and partitional sets of clusters Partitional Clustering A division data objects into non-overlapping subsets (clusters) such that each data object is in exactly one subset Hierarchical clustering A set of nested clusters organized as a hierarchical tree

Partitional Clustering A Partitional Clustering Original Points

Hierarchical Clustering Traditional Hierarchical Clustering Traditional Dendrogram Non-traditional Hierarchical Clustering Non-traditional Dendrogram

Types of Clusters Well-separated clusters Center-based clusters Contiguous clusters Density-based clusters Property or Conceptual Described by an Objective Function

Types of Clusters: Well-Separated Well-Separated Clusters: A cluster is a set of points such that any point in a cluster is closer (or more similar) to every other point in the cluster than to any point not in the cluster. 3 well-separated clusters

Types of Clusters: Center-Based A cluster is a set of objects such that an object in a cluster is closer (more similar) to the “center” of a cluster, than to the center of any other cluster The center of a cluster is often a centroid, the average of all the points in the cluster, or a medoid, the most “representative” point of a cluster 4 center-based clusters

Types of Clusters: Contiguity-Based Contiguous Cluster (Nearest neighbor or Transitive) A cluster is a set of points such that a point in a cluster is closer (or more similar) to one or more other points in the cluster than to any point not in the cluster. 8 contiguous clusters

Types of Clusters: Density-Based A cluster is a dense region of points, which is separated by low-density regions, from other regions of high density. Used when the clusters are irregular or intertwined, and when noise and outliers are present. 6 density-based clusters

Types of Clusters: Conceptual Clusters Shared Property or Conceptual Clusters Finds clusters that share some common property or represent a particular concept. . 2 Overlapping Circles

Clustering Algorithms K-means and its variants Hierarchical clustering Density-based clustering

K-means Clustering Partitional clustering approach Each cluster is associated with a centroid (center point) Each point is assigned to the cluster with the closest centroid Number of clusters, K, must be specified The basic algorithm is very simple

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. Comparing: PAM: O(k(n-k)2 ), CLARA: O(ks2 + k(n-k)) Comment: 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 April 21, 2017 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

Evaluating K-means Clusters Most common measure is Sum of Squared Error (SSE) For each point, the error is the distance to the nearest cluster To get SSE, we square these errors and sum them. x is a data point in cluster Ci and mi is the representative point for cluster Ci can show that mi corresponds to the center (mean) of the cluster Given two clusters, we can choose the one with the smallest error One easy way to reduce SSE is to increase K, the number of clusters A good clustering with smaller K can have a lower SSE than a poor clustering with higher K

Limitations of K-means K-means has problems when clusters are of differing Sizes Densities Non-globular shapes K-means has problems when the data contains outliers.

Limitations of K-means: Differing Sizes Original Points K-means (3 Clusters)

Limitations of K-means: Differing Density Original Points K-means (3 Clusters)

Limitations of K-means: Non-globular Shapes Original Points K-means (2 Clusters)

Hierarchical Clustering Produces a set of nested clusters organized as a hierarchical tree Can be visualized as a dendrogram A tree like diagram that records the sequences of merges or splits

Strengths of Hierarchical Clustering Do not have to assume any particular number of clusters Any desired number of clusters can be obtained by ‘cutting’ the dendogram at the proper level They may correspond to meaningful taxonomies Example in biological sciences (e.g., animal kingdom, phylogeny reconstruction, …)

Hierarchical Clustering Two main types of hierarchical clustering Agglomerative: Start with the points as individual clusters At each step, merge the closest pair of clusters until only one cluster (or k clusters) left Divisive: Start with one, all-inclusive cluster At each step, split a cluster until each cluster contains a point (or there are k clusters) Traditional hierarchical algorithms use a similarity or distance matrix Merge or split one cluster at a time

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 b d c e a a b d e c d e a b c d e agglomerative (AGNES) divisive (DIANA) April 21, 2017 Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques

Agglomerative Clustering Algorithm More popular hierarchical clustering technique Basic algorithm is straightforward Compute the proximity matrix Let each data point be a cluster Repeat Merge the two closest clusters Update the proximity matrix Until only a single cluster remains Key operation is the computation of the proximity of two clusters Different approaches to defining the distance between clusters distinguish the different algorithms

How to Define Inter-Cluster Similarity p1 p3 p5 p4 p2 . . . . Similarity? MIN MAX Group Average Distance Between Centroids Other methods driven by an objective function Ward’s Method uses squared error Proximity Matrix

How to Define Inter-Cluster Similarity p1 p3 p5 p4 p2 . . . . MIN MAX Group Average Distance Between Centroids Other methods driven by an objective function Ward’s Method uses squared error Proximity Matrix

How to Define Inter-Cluster Similarity p1 p3 p5 p4 p2 . . . . MIN MAX Group Average Distance Between Centroids Other methods driven by an objective function Ward’s Method uses squared error Proximity Matrix

How to Define Inter-Cluster Similarity p1 p3 p5 p4 p2 . . . . MIN MAX Group Average Distance Between Centroids Other methods driven by an objective function Ward’s Method uses squared error Proximity Matrix

How to Define Inter-Cluster Similarity p1 p3 p5 p4 p2 . . . .   MIN MAX Group Average Distance Between Centroids Other methods driven by an objective function Ward’s Method uses squared error Proximity Matrix

Hierarchical Clustering: Group Average Compromise between Single and Complete Link Strengths Less susceptible to noise and outliers Limitations Biased towards globular clusters

Hierarchical Clustering: Time and Space requirements O(N2) space since it uses the proximity matrix. N is the number of points. O(N3) time in many cases There are N steps and at each step the size, N2, proximity matrix must be updated and searched Complexity can be reduced to O(N2 log(N) ) time for some approaches

Hierarchical Clustering: Problems and Limitations Once a decision is made to combine two clusters, it cannot be undone No objective function is directly minimized Different schemes have problems with one or more of the following: Sensitivity to noise and outliers Difficulty handling different sized clusters and convex shapes Breaking large clusters

Cluster Validity For supervised classification we have a variety of measures to evaluate how good our model is Accuracy, precision, recall For cluster analysis, the analogous question is how to evaluate the “goodness” of the resulting clusters? But “clusters are in the eye of the beholder”! Then why do we want to evaluate them? To avoid finding patterns in noise To compare clustering algorithms To compare two sets of clusters To compare two clusters

Quality: 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

Internal Measures: Cohesion and Separation Cluster Cohesion: Measures how closely related are objects in a cluster Example: SSE Cluster Separation: Measure how distinct or well- separated a cluster is from other clusters Example: Squared Error Cohesion is measured by the within cluster sum of squares (SSE) Separation is measured by the between cluster sum of squares Where |Ci| is the size of cluster i

Internal Measures: Cohesion and Separation A proximity graph based approach can also be used for cohesion and separation. Cluster cohesion is the sum of the weight of all links within a cluster. Cluster separation is the sum of the weights between nodes in the cluster and nodes outside the cluster. cohesion separation