A spectroscopy of texts for effective clustering

  • Authors:
  • Wenyuan Li;Wee-Keong Ng;Kok-Leong Ong;Ee-Peng Lim

  • Affiliations:
  • Nanyang Technological University, Centre for Advanced Information Systems, Nanyang Avenue, N4-B3C-14, 639798, Singapore;Nanyang Technological University, Centre for Advanced Information Systems, Nanyang Avenue, N4-B3C-14, 639798, Singapore;School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Victoria 3217, Australia;Nanyang Technological University, Centre for Advanced Information Systems, Nanyang Avenue, N4-B3C-14, 639798, Singapore

  • Venue:
  • PKDD '04 Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

For many clustering algorithms, such as k-means, EM, and CLOPE, there is usually a requirement to set some parameters. Often, these parameters directly or indirectly control the number of clusters to return. In the presence of different data characteristics and analysis contexts, it is often difficult for the user to estimate the number of clusters in the data set. This is especially true in text collections such as Web documents, images or biological data. The fundamental question this paper addresses is: "How can we effectively estimate the natural number of clusters in a given text collection?". We propose to use spectral analysis, which analyzes the eigenvalues (not eigenvectors) of the collection, as the solution to the above. We first present the relationship between a text collection and its underlying spectra. We then show how the answer to this question enhances the clustering process. Finally, we conclude with empirical results and related work.