Self-organization as an iterative kernel smoothing process

  • Authors:
  • Filip Mulier;Vladimir Cherkassky

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Neural Computation
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

Kohonen's self-organizing map, when described in a batchprocessing mode, can be interpreted as a statistical kernelsmoothing problem. The batch SOM algorithm consists of two steps.First, the training data are partitioned according to the Voronoiregions of the map unit locations. Second, the units are updated bytaking weighted centroids of the data falling into the Voronoiregions, with the weighing function given by the neighborhood.Then, the neighborhood width is decreased and steps 1, 2 arerepeated. The second step can be interpreted as a statisticalkernel smoothing problem where the neighborhood functioncorresponds to the kernel and neighborhood width corresponds tokernel span. To determine the new unit locations, kernel smoothingis applied to the centroids of the Voronoi regions in thetopological space. This interpretation leads to some new insightsconcerning the role of the neighborhood and dimensionalityreduction. It also strengthens the algorithm's connection with thePrincipal Curve algorithm. A generalized self-organizing algorithmis proposed, where the kernel smoothing step is replaced with anarbitrary nonparametric regression method.