Improvement of the validity index for determination of an appropriate data partitioning

Abstract

In this paper a detail analysis of an improvement of the Silhouette validity index is presented. This proposed approach is based on using an additional component which improves clusters validity assessment and provides better results during a clustering process, especially when the naturally existing groups in a data set are located in very different distances. The performance of the modified index is demonstrated for several data sets, where the Complete–linkage method has been applied as the underlying clustering technique. The results prove superiority of the new approach as compared to other methods.