Swarm intelligence algorithms for data clustering

Abstract

Clustering aims at representing large datasets by a fewer number of prototypes or clusters. It brings simplicity in modeling data and thus plays a central role in the process of knowledge discovery and data mining. Data mining tasks, in these days, require fast and accurate partitioning of huge datasets, which may come with a variety of attributes or features. This, in turn, imposes severe computational requirements on the relevant clustering techniques. A family of bio-inspired algorithms, well-known as Swarm Intelligence (SI) has recently emerged that meets these requirements and has successfully been applied to a number of real world clustering problems. This chapter explores the role of SI in clustering different kinds of datasets. It finally describes a new SI technique for partitioning any dataset into an optimal number of groups through one run of optimization. Computer simulations undertaken in this research have also been provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. © 2008 Springer-Verlag US.