Gravitational clustering: a new approach based on the spatial distribution of the points

We describe here a new clustering method based on the notion of a force of attraction between each pair of points, and without using a “similarity” measure. The clusters are formed by allowing each point to move slowly under the resultant effect of all the forces on it, and by merging two points whe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Pattern recognition 1999-07, Vol.32 (7), p.1149-1160
Main Author: Kundu, Sukhamay
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Clustering
Computer science
control theory
systems
Exact sciences and technology
General topics
Mathematics
Probability and statistics
Sciences and techniques of general use
Spatial distribution
Statistics
Theoretical computing
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Summary:We describe here a new clustering method based on the notion of a force of attraction between each pair of points, and without using a “similarity” measure. The clusters are formed by allowing each point to move slowly under the resultant effect of all the forces on it, and by merging two points when they become too close to each other. This model can be regarded as a refinement of both the nearest-neighbor method and the fuzzy c-means method, and it avoids some of the pitfalls of both of those methods. It produces a complete cluster-hierarchy in O( N 3) time for N points. We illustrate the method with several examples.
ISSN:0031-3203
1873-5142
DOI:10.1016/S0031-3203(98)00143-5