Visual interactive evolutionary algorithm for high dimensional data clustering and outlier detection

Abstract

Usual visualization techniques for multidimensional data sets, such as parallel coordinates and scatter-plot matrices, do not scale well to high numbers of dimensions. A common approach to solve this problem is dimensionality selection. Existing dimensionality selection techniques usually select pertinent dimension subsets that are significant to the user without loose of information. We present concrete cooperation between automatic algorithms, interactive algorithms and visualization tools: the evolutionary algorithm is used to obtain optimal dimension subsets which represent the original data set without loosing information for unsupervised mode (clustering or outlier detection). The last effective cooperation is a visualization tool used to present the user interactive evolutionary algorithm results and let him actively participate in evolutionary algorithm searching with more efficiency resulting in a faster evolutionary algorithm convergence. We have implemented our approach and applied it to real data set to confirm this approach is effective for supporting the user in the exploration of high dimensional data sets. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.