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A Multicriteria Decision Making Approach for Estimating the Number of Clusters in a Data Set

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  • Yi Peng
  • Yong Zhang
  • Gang Kou
  • Yong Shi

Abstract

Determining the number of clusters in a data set is an essential yet difficult step in cluster analysis. Since this task involves more than one criterion, it can be modeled as a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. This paper proposes a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM)-based approach to estimate the number of clusters for a given data set. In this approach, MCDM methods consider different numbers of clusters as alternatives and the outputs of any clustering algorithm on validity measures as criteria. The proposed method is examined by an experimental study using three MCDM methods, the well-known clustering algorithm–k-means, ten relative measures, and fifteen public-domain UCI machine learning data sets. The results show that MCDM methods work fairly well in estimating the number of clusters in the data and outperform the ten relative measures considered in the study.

Suggested Citation

  • Yi Peng & Yong Zhang & Gang Kou & Yong Shi, 2012. "A Multicriteria Decision Making Approach for Estimating the Number of Clusters in a Data Set," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-9, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0041713
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041713
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Glenn Milligan & Martha Cooper, 1985. "An examination of procedures for determining the number of clusters in a data set," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 159-179, June.
    2. Peng, Yi & Kou, Gang & Wang, Guoxun & Shi, Yong, 2011. "FAMCDM: A fusion approach of MCDM methods to rank multiclass classification algorithms," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 677-689, December.
    3. Robert Tibshirani & Guenther Walther & Trevor Hastie, 2001. "Estimating the number of clusters in a data set via the gap statistic," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 63(2), pages 411-423.
    4. Sugar, Catherine A. & James, Gareth M., 2003. "Finding the Number of Clusters in a Dataset: An Information-Theoretic Approach," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 98, pages 750-763, January.
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    3. Zhiyong Li & Xinyi Hu & Ke Li & Fanyin Zhou & Feng Shen, 2020. "Inferring the outcomes of rejected loans: an application of semisupervised clustering," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(2), pages 631-654, February.

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