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    Rights statement: This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Expert Systems with Applications. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Expert Systems with Applications, 138, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2019.07.034

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Evaluation and selection of clustering methods using a hybrid group MCDM

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

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  • S. Barak
  • T. Mokfi
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Article number112817
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>30/12/2019
<mark>Journal</mark>Expert Systems with Applications
Volume138
Number of pages19
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date15/07/19
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Due to the lack of objective measures, the evaluation and prioritization of clustering methods is inherently challenging. Since their evaluation generally involves numerous criteria, it can be designed as a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem and using multiple data sets, the problem can be formulated as a group MCDM modeling.

In this paper, a MCDM-based framework is proposed to evaluate and rank a number of clustering methods. The proposed approach employs three group MCDM algorithms and a Borda count method which leads to a comprehensive, robust framework capable of evaluating and ranking multiple clustering models on manifold data sets (cases). Moreover, we introduce a hybrid data clustering algorithm which combines a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm with a K-means clustering algorithm. Finally, a clustering comparison with regard to both external and internal evaluation indicators is another contribution of this paper.

Six clustering methods are compared based on five evaluation measures. The results of comparative experiments on ten data sets indicate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid clustering method. More importantly, the experimental results vividly demonstrate the effectiveness of the group MCDM-based evaluation on clustering model selection.

Bibliographic note

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Expert Systems with Applications. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Expert Systems with Applications, 138, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2019.07.034