Clustering in Machine LearningClustering or cluster analysis is a machine learning technique, which groups the unlabelled dataset. It can be defined as "A way of grouping the data points into different clusters, consisting of similar data points. The objects with the possible similarities remain in a group that has less or no similarities with another group." It does it by finding some similar patterns in the unlabelled dataset such as shape, size, color, behavior, etc., and divides them as per the presence and absence of those similar patterns. It is an unsupervised learning method, hence no supervision is provided to the algorithm, and it deals with the unlabeled dataset. After applying this clustering technique, each cluster or group is provided with a cluster-ID. ML system can use this id to simplify the processing of large and complex datasets. The clustering technique is commonly used for statistical data analysis. Note: Clustering is somewhere similar to the classification algorithm, but the difference is the type of dataset that we are using. In classification, we work with the labeled data set, whereas in clustering, we work with the unlabelled dataset.Example: Let's understand the clustering technique with the real-world example of Mall: When we visit any shopping mall, we can observe that the things with similar usage are grouped together. Such as the t-shirts are grouped in one section, and trousers are at other sections, similarly, at vegetable sections, apples, bananas, Mangoes, etc., are grouped in separate sections, so that we can easily find out the things. The clustering technique also works in the same way. Other examples of clustering are grouping documents according to the topic. The clustering technique can be widely used in various tasks. Some most common uses of this technique are:
Apart from these general usages, it is used by the Amazon in its recommendation system to provide the recommendations as per the past search of products. Netflix also uses this technique to recommend the movies and web-series to its users as per the watch history. The below diagram explains the working of the clustering algorithm. We can see the different fruits are divided into several groups with similar properties. Types of Clustering MethodsThe clustering methods are broadly divided into Hard clustering (datapoint belongs to only one group) and Soft Clustering (data points can belong to another group also). But there are also other various approaches of Clustering exist. Below are the main clustering methods used in Machine learning:
Partitioning ClusteringIt is a type of clustering that divides the data into non-hierarchical groups. It is also known as the centroid-based method. The most common example of partitioning clustering is the K-Means Clustering algorithm. In this type, the dataset is divided into a set of k groups, where K is used to define the number of pre-defined groups. The cluster center is created in such a way that the distance between the data points of one cluster is minimum as compared to another cluster centroid. Density-Based ClusteringThe density-based clustering method connects the highly-dense areas into clusters, and the arbitrarily shaped distributions are formed as long as the dense region can be connected. This algorithm does it by identifying different clusters in the dataset and connects the areas of high densities into clusters. The dense areas in data space are divided from each other by sparser areas. These algorithms can face difficulty in clustering the data points if the dataset has varying densities and high dimensions. Distribution Model-Based ClusteringIn the distribution model-based clustering method, the data is divided based on the probability of how a dataset belongs to a particular distribution. The grouping is done by assuming some distributions commonly Gaussian Distribution. The example of this type is the Expectation-Maximization Clustering algorithm that uses Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM). Hierarchical ClusteringHierarchical clustering can be used as an alternative for the partitioned clustering as there is no requirement of pre-specifying the number of clusters to be created. In this technique, the dataset is divided into clusters to create a tree-like structure, which is also called a dendrogram. The observations or any number of clusters can be selected by cutting the tree at the correct level. The most common example of this method is the Agglomerative Hierarchical algorithm. Fuzzy ClusteringFuzzy clustering is a type of soft method in which a data object may belong to more than one group or cluster. Each dataset has a set of membership coefficients, which depend on the degree of membership to be in a cluster. Fuzzy C-means algorithm is the example of this type of clustering; it is sometimes also known as the Fuzzy k-means algorithm. Clustering AlgorithmsThe Clustering algorithms can be divided based on their models that are explained above. There are different types of clustering algorithms published, but only a few are commonly used. The clustering algorithm is based on the kind of data that we are using. Such as, some algorithms need to guess the number of clusters in the given dataset, whereas some are required to find the minimum distance between the observation of the dataset. Here we are discussing mainly popular Clustering algorithms that are widely used in machine learning:
Applications of ClusteringBelow are some commonly known applications of clustering technique in Machine Learning:
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