Work

Comparison of Fuzzy Clustering Methods and Their Applications to Geophysics Data

Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: Fuzzy clustering algorithms are helpful when there exists a dataset with subgroupings of points having indistinct boundaries and overlap between the clusters. Traditional methods have been extensively studied and used on real-world data, but require users to have some knowledge of the outcome a priori in order to determine how many clusters to look for. Additionally, iterative algorithms choose the optimal number of clusters based on one of several performance measures. In this study, the authors compare the performance of three algorithms (fuzzy c-means, Gustafson-Kessel, and an iterative version of Gustafson-Kessel) when clustering a traditional data set as well as real-world geophysics data that were collected from an archaeological site in Wyoming. Areas of interest in the were identified using a crisp cutoff value as well as a fuzzy α -cut to determine which provided better elimination of noise and non-relevant points. Results indicate that the α -cut method eliminates more noise than the crisp cutoff values and that the iterative version of the fuzzy clustering algorithm is able to select an optimum number of subclusters within a point set (in both the traditional and real-world data), leading to proper indication of regions of interest for further expert analysis
Language: English
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,000
OpenAlex ID: W2041917805
FWCI: 0.361
Cites: 16
Cited by: 18
Related to: 10