An Integrated Framework for Mixed Data Clustering Using Self Organizing Map

Devaraj, Hari Prasad; Punithavalli, M.

doi:10.3844/jcssp.2011.1639.1645

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Both the traditional SOM-based and ART-based clustering methods can handle numeric features, however they cannot be used directly for categorical features. Categorical features are first transformed into binary features, which are then treated as numeric features [66], [74].…”

Section: Neural Network-based Clusteringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey of State-of-the-Art Mixed Data Clustering Algorithms

2019

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Mixed data comprises both numeric and categorical features, and mixed datasets occur frequently in many domains, such as health, finance, and marketing. Clustering is often applied to mixed datasets to find structures and to group similar objects for further analysis. However, clustering mixed data are challenging because it is difficult to directly apply mathematical operations, such as summation or averaging, to the feature values of these datasets. In this paper, we present a taxonomy for the study of mixed data clustering algorithms by identifying five major research themes. We then present the state-of-the-art review of the research works within each research theme. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these methods with pointers for future research directions. At last, we present an in-depth analysis of the overall challenges in this field, highlight open research questions, and discuss guidelines to make progress in the field. INDEX TERMS Categorical features, clustering, mixed datasets, numeric features. I. INTRODUCTION Clustering is an unsupervised machine learning technique used to group unlabeled data into clusters that contain data points that are 'similar' to each other and 'dissimilar' from those in other clusters [1], [2]. Many clustering algorithms can only handle data that contain either numeric or categorical feature values [3], [4]. Numeric features can take real values, such as height, weight, and distance. Categorical features represent data that can be divided into a fixed number of categories, such as color, race, sex, profession, and blood group. Clustering algorithms group data points into clusters using some notion of 'similarity', which can be as simple as the Euclidean distance. To compute the similarity between numeric feature values, mathematical operations (such as distances, angles, summation, or mean) are applied to them. Distance-based similarity measures are mostly used for numeric data points. Generally, categorical feature values are not inherently ordered (for example, the categorical values, red and blue). It is not possible to directly compute the distance between two categorical feature values. Therefore, computing distance-based similarity measures for categorical data is a challenging task [5]. Nevertheless, several methods The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Haruna Chiroma.

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Section: Neural Network-based Clusteringmentioning

confidence: 99%