62H30 Classification and discrimination; cluster analysis [See also 68T10]
Refine
Document Type
- ZIB-Report (3)
Language
- English (3)
Has Fulltext
- yes (3)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (3) (remove)
Keywords
- Self-Organizing Maps (3) (remove)
Institute
- ZIB Allgemein (3) (remove)
The present paper aims at an extension of {\sc Kohonen's} Self-Organizing Map (SOM) algorithm to be called Self-Organizing Box Map (SOBM) algorithm; it generates box codebooks in lieu of point codebooks. Box codebooks just like point codebooks indirectly define a Voronoi tessellation of the input space, so that each codebook vector represents a unique set of points. Each box codebook vector comprises a multi-dimensional interval that approximates the related partition of the Voronoi tessellation. Upon using the automated cluster identification method that has recently been developed by the authors, the codebook vectors can be grouped in such a way that each group represents a point cluster in the input space. Since the clustering usually depends on the size of the SOM, one cannot be sure, whether the clustering comes out to be optimal. Refinement of part of the identified clusters would often improve the results. This paper presents the concept of an adaptive multilevel cluster algorithm that performs such refinements automatically. Moreover the paper introduces a concept of essential dimensions and suggests a method for their identification based on our herein suggested box codebooks. Applications of the algorithm to molecular dynamics will be described in a forthcoming paper.
For using Data Mining, especially cluster analysis, one needs measures to determine the similarity or distance between data objects. In many application fields the data objects can have different information levels. In this case the widely used euclidean distance is an inappropriate measure. The present paper describes a concept how to use data of different information levels in cluster analysis and suggests an appropriate similarity measure. An example from practice is included, that shows the usefulness of the concept and the measure in combination with {\sc Kohonens} Self-Organizing Map algorithm, a well-known and powerful tool for cluster analysis.
One of the important tasks in Data Mining is automated cluster analysis. Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs) introduced by {\sc Kohonen} are, in principle, a powerful tool for this task. Up to now, however, its cluster identification part is still open to personal bias. The present paper suggests a new approach towards automated cluster identification based on a combination of SOMs with an eigenmode analysis that has recently been developed by {\sc Deuflhard et al.} in the context of molecular conformational dynamics. Details of the algorithm are worked out. Numerical examples from Data Mining and Molecular Dynamics are included.