Introduction to Clustering

Clustering or cluster analysis is a machine learning technique, which groups the unlabeled dataset.
It can be defined as "A way of grouping the data points into different clusters, consisting
of similar data points. The objects with the possible similarities remain in a group
that has less or no similarities with another group."

It does it by finding some similar patterns in the unlabeled dataset such as shape, size, color,
behavior, etc., and divides them as per the presence and absence of those similar patterns. The
clustering technique is commonly used for statistical data analysis.

Example: Let's understand the clustering technique with the real-world example of Mall: When we
visit any shopping mall, we can observe that the things with similar usage are grouped together. Such
as the t-shirts are grouped in one section, and trousers are at other sections, similarly, at vegetable
sections, apples, bananas, Mangoes, etc., are grouped in separate sections, so that we can easily find
out the things. The clustering technique also works in the same way. Other examples of clustering
are grouping documents according to the topic.

The clustering technique can be widely used in various tasks. Some most common uses of this
technique are:

o Market Segmentation
o Statistical data analysis
o Social network analysis
o Image segmentation
o Anomaly detection, etc.

Apart from these general usages, it is used by the Amazon in its recommendation system to provide
the recommendations as per the past search of products. Netflix also uses this technique to
recommend the movies and web-series to its users as per the watch history.

The below diagram explains the working of the clustering algorithm. We can see the different fruits
are divided into several groups with similar properties.

Types of Clustering Methods

The clustering methods are broadly divided into Hard clustering (data point belongs to only one
group) and Soft Clustering (data points can belong to another group also). But there are also other
various approaches of Clustering exist. Below are the main clustering methods used in Machine
learning?

1. Partitioning Clustering
2. Density-Based Clustering
3. Distribution Model-Based Clustering
4. Hierarchical Clustering
5. Fuzzy Clustering

Partitioning Clustering
It is a type of clustering that divides the data into non-hierarchical groups. It is also known as
the centroid-based method. The most common example of partitioning clustering is the K-
Means Clustering algorithm.

In this type, the dataset is divided into a set of k groups, where K is used to define the number of pre-
defined groups. The cluster center is created in such a way that the distance between the data points
of one cluster is minimum as compared to another cluster centroid.

Density-Based Clustering
The density-based clustering method connects the highly-dense areas into clusters, and the
arbitrarily shaped distributions are formed as long as the dense region can be connected. This
algorithm does it by identifying different clusters in the dataset and connects the areas of high
densities into clusters. The dense areas in data space are divided from each other by sparser areas.

These algorithms can face difficulty in clustering the data points if the dataset has varying densities
and high dimensions.
Distribution Model-Based Clustering
In the distribution model-based clustering method, the data is divided based on the probability of
how a dataset belongs to a particular distribution. The grouping is done by assuming some
distributions commonly Gaussian Distribution.

The example of this type is the Expectation-Maximization Clustering algorithm that uses
Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM).

Hierarchical Clustering
Hierarchical clustering can be used as an alternative for the partitioned clustering as there is no
requirement of pre-specifying the number of clusters to be created. In this technique, the dataset is
divided into clusters to create a tree-like structure, which is also called a dendrogram. The
observations or any number of clusters can be selected by cutting the tree at the correct level. The
most common example of this method is the Agglomerative Hierarchical algorithm.
Fuzzy Clustering
Fuzzy clustering is a type of soft method in which a data object may belong to more than one group
or cluster. Each dataset has a set of membership coefficients, which depend on the degree of
membership to be in a cluster. Fuzzy C-means algorithm is the example of this type of clustering;
it is sometimes also known as the Fuzzy k-means algorithm.

Workflow of Clustering Algorithms

Applications of Clustering
Below are some commonly known applications of clustering technique in Machine Learning:

o In Identification of Cancer Cells: The clustering algorithms are widely used for the identification
of cancerous cells. It divides the cancerous and non-cancerous data sets into different groups.
o In Search Engines: Search engines also work on the clustering technique. The search result appears
based on the closest object to the search query. It does it by grouping similar data objects in one group
 that is far from the other dissimilar objects. The accurate result of a query depends on the quality of
the clustering algorithm used.
o Customer Segmentation: It is used in market research to segment the customers based on their
choice and preferences.
o In Biology: It is used in the biology stream to classify different species of plants and animals using
the image recognition technique.
o In Land Use: The clustering technique is used in identifying the area of similar lands use in the GIS
database. This can be very useful to find that for what purpose the particular land should be used, that
means for which purpose it is more suitable.

K-Means Clustering Algorithm

K-Means Clustering is an unsupervised learning algorithm that is used to solve the clustering
problems in machine learning or data science.

What is K-Means Algorithm?

K-Means Clustering is an Unsupervised Learning algorithm, which groups the unlabeled dataset into
different clusters. Here K defines the number of pre-defined clusters that need to be created in the
process, as if K=2, there will be two clusters, and for K=3, there will be three clusters, and so on.

It allows us to cluster the data into different groups and a convenient way to discover the categories
of groups in the unlabeled dataset on its own without the need for any training.

It is a centroid-based algorithm, where each cluster is associated with a centroid. The main aim of
this algorithm is to minimize the sum of distances between the data point and their corresponding
clusters.

The algorithm takes the unlabeled dataset as input, divides the dataset into k-number of clusters,
and repeats the process until it does not find the best clusters. The value of k should be
predetermined in this algorithm.

The k-means clustering algorithm mainly performs two tasks:

o Determines the best value for K center points or centroids by an iterative process.
o Assigns each data point to its closest k-center. Those data points which are near to the particular k-
center, create a cluster.

Hence each cluster has datapoints with some commonalities, and it is away from other clusters.

The below diagram explains the working of the K-means Clustering Algorithm:
How does the K-Means Algorithm Work?
The working of the K-Means algorithm is explained in the below steps:

Step-1: Select the number K to decide the number of clusters.

Step-2: Select random K points or centroids. (It can be other from the input dataset).

Step-3: Assign each data point to their closest centroid, which will form the predefined K clusters.

Step-4: Calculate the variance and place a new centroid of each cluster.

Step-5: Repeat the third steps, which means reassign each datapoint to the new closest centroid of
each cluster.

Step-6: If any reassignment occurs, then go to step-4 else go to FINISH.

Step-7: The model is ready.

Let's understand the above steps by considering the visual plots:

Suppose we have two variables M1 and M2. The x-y axis scatter plot of these two variables is given
below:
o Let's take number k of clusters, i.e., K=2, to identify the dataset and to put them into different
clusters. It means here we will try to group these datasets into two different clusters.
o We need to choose some random k points or centroid to form the cluster. These points can be
either the points from the dataset or any other point. So, here we are selecting the below two
points as k points, which are not the part of our dataset. Consider the below image:

o Now we will assign each data point of the scatter plot to its closest K-point or centroid. We
will compute it by applying some mathematics that we have studied to calculate the distance
between two points. So, we will draw a median between both the centroids. Consider the
below image:
From the above image, it is clear that points left side of the line is near to the K1 or blue centroid,
and points to the right of the line are close to the yellow centroid. Let's color them as blue and
yellow for clear visualization.

o As we need to find the closest cluster, so we will repeat the process by choosing a new
centroid. To choose the new centroids, we will compute the center of gravity of these
centroids, and will find new centroids as below:
 o Next, we will reassign each datapoint to the new centroid. For this, we will repeat the same
process of finding a median line. The median will be like below image:

From the above image, we can see, one yellow point is on the left side of the line, and two blue
points are right to the line. So, these three points will be assigned to new centroids.

.
As reassignment has taken place, so we will again go to the step-4, which is finding new centroids or
K-points.

o We will repeat the process by finding the center of gravity of centroids, so the new centroids
will be as shown in the below image:

As we got the new centroids so again will draw the median line and reassign the data points. So,
the image will be:
 o We can see in the above image; there are no dissimilar data points on either side of the line,
which means our model is formed. Consider the below image:

As our model is ready, so we can now remove the assumed centroids, and the two final clusters will
be as shown in the below image: