Algorithms for Fuzzy Clustering

The main subject of this book is the fuzzy c-means proposed by Dunn and Bezdek and their variations including recent studies. The book uncovers theoretical and methodological differences between the Dunn and Bezdek method and the entropy-based method.

Recently many researchers are working on cluster analysis as a main tool for exploratory data analysis and data mining. A notable feature is that specialists in di?erent ?elds of sciences are considering the tool of data clustering to be useful. A major reason is that clustering algorithms and software are ?exible in thesensethatdi?erentmathematicalframeworksareemployedinthealgorithms and a user can select a suitable method according to his application. Moreover clusteringalgorithmshavedi?erentoutputsrangingfromtheolddendrogramsof agglomerativeclustering to more recent self-organizingmaps. Thus, a researcher or user can choose an appropriate output suited to his purpose,which is another ?exibility of the methods of clustering. An old and still most popular method is the K-means which use K cluster centers. A group of data is gathered around a cluster center and thus forms a cluster. The main subject of this book is the fuzzy c-means proposed by Dunn and Bezdek and their variations including recent studies. A main reasonwhy we concentrate on fuzzy c-means is that most methodology and application studies infuzzy clusteringusefuzzy c-means,andfuzzy c-meansshouldbe consideredto beamajortechniqueofclusteringingeneral,regardlesswhetheroneisinterested in fuzzy methods or not. Moreover recent advances in clustering techniques are rapid and we requirea new textbook that includes recent algorithms.We should also note that several books have recently been published but the contents do not include some methods studied herein.

Presents recent advances in algorithms for fuzzy clustering

Klappentext

The main subject of this book is the fuzzy c-means proposed by Dunn and Bezdek and their variations including recent studies. A main reason why we concentrate on fuzzy c-means is that most methodology and application studies in fuzzy clustering use fuzzy c-means, and hence fuzzy c-means should be considered to be a major technique of clustering in general, regardless whether one is interested in fuzzy methods or not. Unlike most studies in fuzzy c-means, what we emphasize in this book is a family of algorithms using entropy or entropy-regularized methods which are less known, but we consider the entropy-based method to be another useful method of fuzzy c-means. Throughout this book one of our intentions is to uncover theoretical and methodological differences between the Dunn and Bezdek traditional method and the entropy-based method. We do note claim that the entropy-based method is better than the traditional method, but we believe that the methods of fuzzy c-means become complete by adding the entropy-based method to the method by Dunn and Bezdek, since we can observe natures of the both methods more deeply by contrasting these two.

Inhalt
BasicMethods for c-Means Clustering.- Variations and Generalizations - I.- Variations and Generalizations - II.- Miscellanea.- Application to Classifier Design.- Fuzzy Clustering and Probabilistic PCA Model.- Local Multivariate Analysis Based on Fuzzy Clustering.- Extended Algorithms for Local Multivariate Analysis.