Università degli Studi di Milano

Master Degree in Computer Science

Information Management
course
Teacher: Alberto Ceselli

Lecture 20: 09/12/2014

 Data Mining:
Concepts and Techniques
(3rd ed.)

— Chapter 10 —
Jiawei Han, Micheline Kamber, and Jian Pei
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign &
Simon Fraser University
©2011 Han, Kamber & Pei. All rights reserved.
2
 Cluster Analysis: Concepts and
Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary
3
 What is Cluster Analysis?
 Cluster: A collection of data objects
 similar (or related) to one another within the same

group
 dissimilar (or unrelated) to the objects in other groups

 Cluster analysis (or clustering, data segmentation, …)

 Finding similarities between data according to the

characteristics found in the data and grouping similar

data objects into clusters
 Unsupervised learning: no predefined classes (i.e., try to
learn by extracting regularities in data)
 Typical applications
 As a stand-alone tool to get insight into data

distribution
 As a preprocessing step for other algorithms

4
Applications of Cluster Analysis
 Data reduction
 Summarization: Preprocessing for regression, PCA,
classification, and association analysis
 Compression: Image processing: vector quantization
 Hypothesis generation and testing
 Prediction based on groups
 Cluster & find characteristics/patterns for each group

 Finding K-nearest Neighbors

 Localizing search to one or a small number of clusters
 Outlier detection: Outliers are often viewed as those “far
away” from any cluster

5
Clustering: Application Examples
 Biology: taxonomy of living things: kingdom, phylum, class,
order, family, genus and species
 Information retrieval: document clustering
 Land use: Identification of areas of similar land use in an
earth observation database
 Marketing: Help marketers discover distinct groups in their
customer bases, and then use this knowledge to develop
targeted marketing programs
 City-planning: Identifying groups of houses according to their
house type, value, and geographical location
 Earth-quake studies: Observed earth quake epicenters
should be clustered along continent faults
 Climate: understanding earth climate, find patterns of
atmospheric and ocean
 Economic Science: market research
6
Basic Steps to Develop a Clustering
Task
 Feature selection
 Select info concerning the task of interest
 Minimal information redundancy
 Proximity measure
 Similarity of two feature vectors
 Clustering criterion
 Expressed via a cost function or some rules
 Clustering algorithms
 Choice of algorithms
 Validation of the results
 Validation test (also, clustering tendency test)
 Interpretation of the results
 Integration with applications

7
Quality: What Is Good Clustering?
 A good clustering method will produce high quality
clusters
 high intra-class similarity: cohesive within clusters
 low inter-class similarity: distinctive between clusters
 The quality of a clustering method depends on
 the similarity measure used by the method
 its implementation (optimality guarantees +
computational effectiveness), and
 Its ability to discover some or all of the hidden
patterns (practical behavior)

8
 Measure the Quality of Clustering
 Dissimilarity/Similarity metric
 Similarity is expressed in terms of a (typically metric)
pairwise distance function d(i, j)
 The definitions of distance functions are usually
rather different for interval-scaled, boolean,
categorical, ordinal ratio, and vector variables
 Weights should be associated with different
variables based on applications and data semantics
 Quality of clustering:
 There is usually a separate global quality function
that measures the “goodness” of a cluster.
 It is hard to define “similar enough” or “good
enough” (need to stick to the application!)

The answer is typically highly subjective (i.e.
don't blame the algorithm for modeling errors) 9
 Major Clustering Approaches

 Partitioning approach:
 Construct various partitions and then evaluate them by

some criterion, e.g., minimizing the sum of square errors

 Typical methods: k-means, k-medoids, CLARANS

 Hierarchical approach:
 Create a hierarchical decomposition of the set of data (or

objects) using some criterion

 Agglomerative (bottom-up) or divisive (top-down)

 Density-based approach:
 Based on connectivity and density functions (keep growing

as points are still in the neighborhood of cluster elements)

 Find arbitrarily shaped clusters

 Grid-based approach:
 Quantize object space in a grid structure

 build a multiple-level granularity structure

12
Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts and
Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary
14
 Partitioning Algorithms: Basic
Concept
Partitioning method:
•
given the number of clusters k
•
given a dissimilarity measure (partitioning criterion)
•
given a database D of n objects
•
partition it into a set of k clusters
•
such that the sum of dissimilarities with respect to a cluster
representative ci is minimized (e.g. squared distances to the
centroid or medoid of cluster Ci)

k 2
E =Σ i=1 Σ p∈C i (d ( p ,c i ))

15
 Partitioning Algorithms: Basic
Concept
Partitioning method:
•

 Exact (globally opt) methods: mixed integer programming

 Heuristic methods: k-means and k-medoids algorithms
 k-means (MacQueen’67, Lloyd’57/’82): Each cluster is
represented by the center (attibute-wise means) of the
cluster
 k-medoids or k-medians or PAM (Partition Around Medoids)
(Kaufman & Rousseeuw’87): Each cluster is represented by
one of the objects in the cluster

16
 The K-Means Clustering
Method

 Given k, the k-means algorithm is implemented

in four steps:
1)Partition objects into k nonempty subsets
2)Compute seed points as the centroids of the
clusters of the current partitioning (the
centroid is the center, i.e., mean point, of the
cluster)
3)Assign each object to the cluster with the
nearest seed point
4)Go back to Step 2, stop when the
assignment does not change
17
 Comments on the K-Means
Method
 Strength: Efficient: O(tkn), where

n is # objects, k is # clusters, and t is # iterations.

Normally, k, t << n.
 Comparing: PAM: O(k(n-k)2 ), CLARA: O(ks2 + k(n-k))
 Weakness
 Heuristc; often terminates at a local optimal
 Applicable only to objects in a continuous n-dimensional space
 Using the k-modes for categorical data

Using the k-medoids for a wider range of data
 Need to give k, the number of clusters, as input
(there are ways to guess meaningful k, see Hastie et al. 2009)
 Sensitive to noisy data and outliers
 Not suitable to discover clusters with non-convex shapes

19
 Variations of the K-Means Method
 Most of the variants of the k-means which differ in
 Selection of the initial k means
 Dissimilarity calculations
 Strategies to calculate cluster means
 Handling categorical data: k-modes
 Replacing means of clusters with modes
 Using new dissimilarity measures to deal with categorical objects
 Using a frequency-based method to update modes of clusters
 A mixture of categorical and numerical data: k-prototype method

20
What Is the Problem of the K-Means Method?

 The k-means algorithm is sensitive to outliers !

 Since an object with an extremely large value may
substantially distort the distribution of the data
 K-Medoids: Instead of taking the mean value of the object in
a cluster as a reference point, medoids can be used, which is
the most centrally located object in a cluster

10 10
9 9
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

21
 PAM: A Typical K-Medoids Algorithm
Total Cost = 20
10 10 10

9 9 9

8 8 8

7 7 7

6
Arbitrar 6
Assign 6

5
y 5 each 5

4 choose 4 remaini 4

3
k object 3
ng 3

2
as 2
object 2

1 1
initial to
1

0 0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
medoid 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
nearest 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

K=2 s medoid Randomly select a

s nonmedoid
Total Cost = 26 object,Oramdom
10 10

Do loop 9

8 Compute
9

8
Swapping 7 total cost 7

Until no O and 6
of 6

Oramdom
change
5 5

4
swapping 4

If quality is 3

2
3

improved. 1 1

0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

22
 The K-Medoid Clustering Method

 K-Medoids Clustering: Find representative objects (medoids) in

clusters
 PAM (Partitioning Around Medoids, Kaufmann & Rousseeuw 1987)
 Starts from an initial set of medoids and iteratively replaces
one of the medoids by one of the non-medoids if it improves
the total distance of the resulting clustering
 PAM works effectively for small data sets, but does not scale
well for large data sets (due to the computational complexity)
 Efficiency improvement on PAM
 CLARA (Kaufmann & Rousseeuw, 1990): PAM on samples
 CLARANS (Ng & Han, 1994): Randomized re-sampling

23
Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary

24
 Hierarchical Clustering
 Use distance matrix as clustering criteria. This
method does not require the number of clusters k
as an input, but needs a termination condition
Step 0 Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 agglomerative
(AGNES)
a
ab
b
abcde
c
cde
d
de
e
divisive
(DIANA)
Step 4 Step 3 Step 2 Step 1 Step 0

25
 AGNES (AGglomerative
NESting)
 Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)
 Implemented in statistical packages, e.g., Splus
 Use the single-link method and the dissimilarity
matrix
 Merge nodes that have the least dissimilarity
 Go on in a non-descending fashion
 Eventually all nodes belong to the same cluster
10 10 10

9 9 9

8 8 8

7 7 7

6 6 6

5 5 5

4 4 4

3 3 3

2 2 2

1 1 1

0 0 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

26
 DIANA (DIvisive ANAlysis)

 Introduced in Kaufmann and Rousseeuw (1990)

 Implemented in statistical analysis packages, e.g.,
Splus
 Inverse order of AGNES
 Eventually each node forms a cluster on its own

10 10
10

9 9
9
8 8
8

7 7
7

6 6
6

5 5
5
4 4
4

3 3
3
2 2
2

1 1
1
0 0
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

27
Dendrogram: Shows How Clusters are
Merged
Decompose data objects into a several levels of nested partitioning (tree of
clusters), called a dendrogram

A clustering of the data objects is obtained by cutting the dendrogram at

the desired level, then each connected component forms a cluster

28
 Distance between X X

Clusters
 Single link: smallest distance between an element in one cluster
and an element in the other, i.e., dist(Ki, Kj) = minp in Ki, q in Kj d(p,q)
 Complete link: largest distance between an element in one
cluster and an element in the other, i.e.,
dist(Ki, Kj) = maxp in Ki, q in Kj d(p,q)
 Average: avg distance between an element in one cluster and an
element in the other, i.e.,
dist(Ki, Kj) = sump in Ki, q in Kj d(p,q) / (|Ki||Kj|)
 Centroid: distance between the centroids of two clusters, e.g.,
p = mean(Ki), q = mean(Kj), dist(Ki, Kj) = d(p,q)
 Medoid: distance between the medoids of two clusters, i.e.,
p = median(Ki), q = median(Kj), dist(Ki, Kj) = d(p,q)
29
 Distance between X X

Clusters
 Algorithms using minimum distance are also called
nearest-neighbor clustering algorithms
 they build minimum spanning trees
 if clustering is terminated when the minimum inter-
cluster distance exceeds a given threshold they are
called single-linkage
 Algorithms using maximum distance are also called
farthest-neighbor clustering algorithms
 If clustering is terminated when the maximum inter-
cluster distance between nearest clusters exceeds a
given threshold they are called complete-linkage

30
Centroid, Radius and Diameter of a
Cluster (for numerical data sets)
 Centroid: the “middle” of a cluster
Σ iN=1 ( t )
C m= ip

N
 Radius: square root of average distance from any
point of the cluster to its centroid

√
N 2
Σ i=1 (t ip−c m )
Rm =
N
 Diameter: square root of average mean squared
distance between all pairs of points in the cluster

√
N N 2
Σ i=1 Σ (t ip −t iq )
i=1
D m=
N ( N −1)
31
 Extensions to Hierarchical
Clustering
 Major weakness of agglomerative clustering methods
 Can never undo what was done previously
 Do not scale well: time complexity of at least O(n2),
where n is the number of total objects
 Integration of hierarchical & distance-based clustering
 BIRCH (1996): uses CF-tree and incrementally adjusts
the quality of sub-clusters
 CHAMELEON (1999): hierarchical clustering using
dynamic modeling

32
BIRCH (Balanced Iterative Reducing
and Clustering Using Hierarchies)
 Zhang, Ramakrishnan & Livny, SIGMOD’96
 Clustering Feature (CF): <n, LS, SS>
 n: number of points, LS: their sum, SS: their sum of squares
 Easy to compute centroid, radius and diameter from CF
 CFs are additive
 Incrementally construct a CF tree, a hierarchical data structure
for multiphase clustering
 Phase 1: scan DB to build an initial in-memory CF tree (a
multi-level compression of the data that tries to preserve its
inherent clustering structure)
 Phase 2: use an arbitrary clustering algorithm to cluster the
leaf nodes of the CF-tree

33
BIRCH (Balanced Iterative Reducing
and Clustering Using Hierarchies)
 Scales linearly: finds a good clustering with a single scan and
improves the quality with a few additional scans
 Weakness: handles only numeric data, and sensitive to the
order of the data record

34
 Clustering Feature Vector in
BIRCH
Clustering Feature (CF): CF = (N, LS, SS)
N: Number of data points
LS: linear sum of N points: N
∑ Xi
i =1
SS: square sum of N points
CF = (5, (16;30),(54;190))

N 10

(3,4)
∑ Xi 2 9

7 (2,6)
i =1 6

5 (4,5)
4

3 (4,7)
2

1 (3,8)
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

35
 CF-Tree in BIRCH
 Clustering feature:
 Summary of the statistics for a given subcluster: the 0-th,
1st, and 2nd moments of the subcluster from the statistical
point of view
 Registers crucial measurements for computing cluster and
utilizes storage efficiently
A CF tree is a height-balanced tree that stores the clustering
features for a hierarchical clustering
 A nonleaf node in a tree has descendants or “children”
 The nonleaf nodes store sums of the CFs of their children
 A CF tree has two parameters
 Branching factor: max # of children
 Threshold: max diameter of sub-clusters stored at the leaf
nodes
36
 The CF Tree Structure
Root

B=7 CF1 CF2 CF3 CF6

L=6 child1 child2 child3 child6

Non-leaf node

CF1 CF2 CF3 CF5

child1 child2 child3 child5

Leaf node Leaf node

prev CF1 CF2 CF6 next prev CF1 CF2 CF4 next

37
 The Birch Algorithm

√
 Cluster Diameter 1
n( n−1)
∑ ( x i − x j ) 2

 For each point in the input

 Find closest leaf entry

 Add point to leaf entry and update CF

 If entry diameter > max_diameter, then split leaf, and

possibly parents
 Algorithm is O(n)
 Concerns
 Sensitive to insertion order of data points

 Since we fix the size of leaf nodes, so clusters may not be

so natural
 Clusters tend to be spherical given the radius and diameter

measures
38
CHAMELEON: Hierarchical Clustering
Using Dynamic Modeling (1999)
 CHAMELEON: G. Karypis, E. H. Han, and V. Kumar, 1999
 Measures the similarity based on a dynamic model
 Two clusters are merged only if the interconnectivity
and closeness (proximity) between two clusters are
high relative to the internal interconnectivity of the
clusters and closeness of items within the clusters
 Graph-based, and two-phase algorithm
1. Use a graph-partitioning algorithm: cluster objects
into a large number of relatively small sub-clusters
2. Use an agglomerative hierarchical clustering
algorithm: find the genuine clusters by repeatedly
combining these sub-clusters

39
KNN Graphs & Interconnectivity
 k-nearest graphs from an original data in 2D:

 EC{Ci ,Cj } :The absolute inter-connectivity between Ci

and Cj: the sum of the weight of the edges that
connect vertices in Ci to vertices in Cj
 Internal inter-connectivity of a cluster Ci : the size of
its min-cut bisector ECCi (i.e., the weighted sum of
edges that partition the graph into two roughly
equal parts)
 Relative Inter-connectivity (RI): 40
Relative Closeness & Merge of Sub-
Clusters
 Relative closeness between a pair of clusters Ci
and Cj : the absolute closeness between Ci and Cj
normalized w.r.t. the internal closeness of the two
clusters Ci and Cj

 and are the average weights of the edges

that belong in the min-cut bisector of clusters Ci and Cj ,
respectively, and is the average weight of the
edges that connect vertices in Ci to vertices in Cj
 Merge Sub-Clusters:
 Merges only those pairs of clusters whose RI and RC are
both above some user-specified thresholds
 Merge those maximizing a function combining RI & RC
41
 Overall Framework of
CHAMELEON
Construct (K-NN)
Sparse Graph Partition the Graph

Data Set

K-NN Graph
P and q are Merge Partition
connected if q is
among the top k
closest neighbors of Relative interconnectivity:
p connectivity of c1 and c2 over
internal connectivity
Final Clusters
Relative closeness:
closeness of c1 and c2 over
internal closeness 42
CHAMELEON (Clustering Complex Objects)

43
Hierarchical Clustering Summary
 Hierarchical clustering strengths
 Produce at once clustering solutions for different k values
 Link them, highlighting regularities
 Hierarchical clustering weaknesses
 Nontrivial to choose a good distance measure
 Hard to handle missing attribute values
 Algorithmically (besides theoretically) hard: mainly heuristics in
practical settings

44
 Probabilistic Hierarchical
Clustering
 Hierarchical (distance-based) clustering strengths ...
 Hierarchical (distance-based) clustering weaknesses ...
 Probabilistic (“fitting”) hierarchical clustering
 Use probabilistic models to measure distances between clusters
 Generative model: Regard the set of data objects to be clustered
as a sample of the underlying data generation mechanism to be
analyzed
 Easy to understand, same efficiency as algorithmic agglomerative
clustering method, can handle partially observed data
 In practice, assume the generative models adopt common
distributions functions, e.g., Gaussian distribution or Bernoulli
distribution, governed by parameters

45
 Generative Model
 Given a set of 1-D points X = {x1, …, xn} for
clustering analysis & assuming they are
generated by a Gaussian distribution:

 The probability that a point xi ∈ X is generated

by the model

 The likelihood that X is generated by the model:

 The task of learning the generative model: find

the parameters μ and σ2 such that

the maximum
likelihood
46
 A Probabilistic Hierarchical Clustering
Algorithm

 For a set of objects partitioned into m clusters C1, . . . ,Cm, the

quality can be measured by,

where P() is the maximum likelihood

 If we merge two clusters Cj1 and Cj2 into a cluster Cj1∪Cj2, then,
the change in quality of the overall clustering is

 Distance between clusters C1 and C2:

48
Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts and
Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary

49
 Density-Based Clustering
Methods
 Clustering based on density (local cluster criterion),
such as density-connected points
 Major features:
 Discover clusters of arbitrary shape

 Handle noise

 One scan

 Need density parameters as termination condition

 Several interesting studies:

 DBSCAN: Ester, et al. (KDD’96)

 OPTICS: Ankerst, et al (SIGMOD’99).

 DENCLUE: Hinneburg & D. Keim (KDD’98)

 CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98) (more grid-

based)
50
 Density-Based Clustering: Basic
Concepts
 Two parameters:
 Eps: Maximum radius of the neighbourhood
 MinPts: Minimum number of points in an Eps-
neighbourhood of that point
 NEps(q): {p belongs to D | dist(p,q) ≤ Eps}
 Directly density-reachable: A point p is directly
density-reachable from a point q
w.r.t. (Eps, MinPts) if
 p belongs to NEps(q) p MinPts = 5
Eps = 1 cm
 core point condition: q
|NEps (q)| ≥ MinPts
51
 Density-Reachable and Density-
Connected
 Density-reachable:
 A point p is density-reachable p
from a point q w.r.t. (Eps, MinPts)
p1
if there is a chain of points p1, …, q
pn, p1 = q, pn = p such that pi+1 is
directly density-reachable from pi

 Density-connected
p q
 A point p is density-connected to
a point q w.r.t. (Eps, MinPts) if
there is a point o such that both, o
p and q are density-reachable
from o w.r.t. Eps and MinPts
52
 DBSCAN: Density-Based Spatial
Clustering of Applications with Noise
 Relies on a density-based notion of cluster: A
cluster is defined as a maximal set of density-
connected points
 Experimentally, discovers clusters of arbitrary
shape in spatial databases with noise
Outlier

Border
Eps = 1cm

Core MinPts = 5

53
 DBSCAN: The Algorithm
 Arbitrary select a point p
 Retrieve all points density-reachable from p w.r.t. Eps
and MinPts
 If p is a core point, a cluster is formed
 If p is a border point, no points are density-reachable
from p and DBSCAN visits the next point of the
database
 Continue the process until all of the points have been
processed
 If a spatial index is used, the computational complexity
of DBSCAN is O(nlogn), where n is the number of
database objects. Otherwise, the complexity is O(n 2)
54
DBSCAN: Sensitive to Parameters

DBSCAN online Demo:

http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~yaling/Cluster/Applet/Code/Cluster.html
55
OPTICS: A Cluster-Ordering Method
(1999)
 OPTICS: Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering
Structure
 Ankerst, Breunig, Kriegel, and Sander

(SIGMOD’99)
 Produces a special order of the database wrt its

density-based clustering structure

 This cluster-ordering contains info equiv to the

density-based clusterings corresponding to a

broad range of parameter settings
 Good for both automatic and interactive cluster

analysis, including finding intrinsic clustering

structure
 Can be represented graphically or using

visualization techniques 56
DENCLUE: Using Statistical Density
Functions
 DENsity-based CLUstEring by Hinneburg & Keim (KDD’98)
total
 Using statistical density functions: influence on
x
d ( x , x i )2
d ( x , y )2 N −
− D 2σ 2
f Gaussian ( x , y)=e 2s 2 f Gaussian ( x )=∑ i=1 e
d ( x , x i )2
influence of N −
D 2σ 2
y on x ∇f Gaussian ( x , x i )=∑ i=1 ( x i − x )⋅e
 Major features gradient of x
in the
 Uses gaussian kernel density approximation direction of xi
n
1 x− x i
f ( x)= ∑ K ( )
ns i =1 s
 Clusters can be determined mathematically by identifying
density attractors (local maxima of the overall density function)
 Center defined clusters: assign to each density attractor the
points density attracted to it (pick each point and follow the
gradient) 61
 Denclue: Technical Essence

 Arbitrary shaped cluster: merge density attractors that

are connected through paths of high density (>
threshold)
 Solid mathematical foundation
 Good for data sets with large amounts of noise
 Allows a compact mathematical description of arbitrarily
shaped clusters in high-dimensional data sets
 Significant faster than existing algorithm (e.g., DBSCAN)
 But needs a large number of parameters

62
Density Attractor

63
Center-Defined and Arbitrary

64
Chapter 10. Cluster Analysis: Basic
Concepts and Methods
 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts
 Partitioning Methods
 Hierarchical Methods
 Density-Based Methods
 Grid-Based Methods
 Evaluation of Clustering
 Summary

65
Grid-Based Clustering Method

 Using multi-resolution grid data structure

 Several interesting methods
 STING (a STatistical INformation Grid

approach) by Wang, Yang and Muntz

(1997)
 WaveCluster by Sheikholeslami,
Chatterjee, and Zhang (VLDB’98)

A multi-resolution clustering approach
using wavelet method
 CLIQUE: Agrawal, et al. (SIGMOD’98)

Both grid-based and subspace clustering
66
STING: A Statistical Information Grid
Approach
 Wang, Yang and Muntz (VLDB’97)
 The spatial area is divided into rectangular cells
 There are several levels of cells corresponding to
different levels of resolution

67
 The STING Clustering Method
 Each cell at a high level is partitioned into a number of
smaller cells in the next lower level
 Statistical info of each cell is calculated and stored
beforehand and is used to answer queries
 Parameters of higher level cells can be easily calculated
from parameters of lower level cell
 count, mean, s, min, max

 type of distribution—normal, uniform, etc.

 Use a top-down approach to answer spatial data queries

 Start from a pre-selected layer—typically with a small
number of cells
 For each cell in the current level compute the
confidence interval

68
 STING Algorithm and Its
Analysis
 Remove the irrelevant cells from further consideration
 When finish examining the current layer, proceed to
the next lower level
 Repeat this process until the bottom layer is reached
 Advantages:
 Query-independent, easy to parallelize, incremental

update
 O(K), where K is the number of grid cells at the

lowest level
 Disadvantages:
 All the cluster boundaries are either horizontal or

vertical, and no diagonal boundary is detected

69
 CLIQUE (Clustering In QUEst)

 Agrawal, Gehrke, Gunopulos, Raghavan (SIGMOD’98)

 Automatically identifying subspaces of a high dimensional data
space that allow better clustering than original space
 CLIQUE can be considered as both density-based and grid-
based
 It partitions each dimension into the same number of equal
length interval
 It partitions an m-dimensional data space into non-
overlapping rectangular units
 A unit is dense if the fraction of total data points contained
in the unit exceeds the input model parameter
 A cluster is a maximal set of connected dense units within a
subspace 70
 CLIQUE: The Major Steps

 Partition the data space and find the number of

points that lie inside each cell of the partition.
 Identify the subspaces that contain clusters using
the Apriori principle
 Identify clusters
 Determine dense units in all subspaces of
interests
 Determine connected dense units in all subspaces
of interests.
 Generate minimal description for the clusters
 Determine maximal regions that cover a cluster of

connected dense units for each cluster

 Determination of minimal cover for each cluster
71
 Salary
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72
 Strength and Weakness of CLIQUE

 Strength
 automatically finds subspaces of the highest

dimensionality such that high density clusters exist in

those subspaces
 insensitive to the order of records in input and does

not presume some canonical data distribution

 scales linearly with the size of input and has good

scalability as the number of dimensions in the data

increases
 Weakness
 The accuracy of the clustering result may be

degraded at the expense of simplicity of the method

73