No abstract

Proper selection of cluster count gives better clustering results in partition models. Partition clustering methods are very simple as well as efficient. Kmeans and its modified versions are very efficient cluster models and the results are very sensitive to the chosen K value. The partition clustering algorithms are more suitable in applications where the data are arranged in a uniform manner. This work aims to evaluate the importance of assigning cluster count value in order to improve the efficiency of partition clustering algorithms using two well known statistical methods, the Elbow method and the Silhouette method. The performance of the Silhouette method and Elbow method are compared with different data sets from the UCI data repository. The values obtained using these methods are compared with the results of cluster performance obtained using the statistical analysis tool Weka on the selected data sets. Performance was evaluated on cluster efficiency for small and large data sets by varying the cluster count values. Similar results obtained from the three methods, the Elbow method, the Silhouette method and the clustering by Weka. It was also observed that the fast reduction in clustering efficiency for small changes in cluster count when the cluster count is small.