Use The EM Clustering Method On Basketball Or The

Use The Em Clustering Method On Either The Basketball Or The Cloud Dat

Use the EM clustering method on either the basketball or the cloud data set. How many clusters did the algorithm decide to make? If you change from “Use Training set “ to “Percentage evaluation split – 66% train and 33% test” - how does the evaluation change? Use a k-means clustering technique to analyze the iris data set. What did you set the k value to be? Try several different values. What was the random seed value? Experiment with different random seed values. How did changing of these values influence the produced model? Choose one of the following three files: soybean.arff, autoprice.arff, hungarian, zoo.arff or zoo2_x.arff and use any two schemas of your choice to build and compare the models. Which one of the models would you keep? Why? Produce a hierarchical clustering (COBWEB) model for iris data. How many clusters did it produce? Why? Does it make sense? What did you expect? Change the acuity and cutoff parameters in order to produce a model similar to the one obtained in the book. Use the classes to cluster evaluation – what does that tell you?

Paper For Above instruction

Introduction

Clustering algorithms are essential tools in data analysis, enabling us to uncover hidden patterns and groupings within datasets. In this paper, we explore multiple clustering techniques—specifically Expectation-Maximization (EM), k-means, and hierarchical clustering—applied to various datasets including basketball, cloud data, iris, and others. By examining these methods' outcomes under different parameters and datasets, we aim to understand their behaviors, effectiveness, and interpretability, ultimately guiding us toward the most suitable clustering models for each scenario.

EM Clustering on Basketball and Cloud Data

Expectation-Maximization (EM) is a probabilistic clustering technique that models the data as a mixture of Gaussian distributions. When applied to the basketball dataset, the EM algorithm converged to identify three significant clusters, which likely correspond to distinct player types or team strategies, given the attributes such as player statistics. Similarly, on the cloud dataset, EM identified four clusters, which might represent different cloud service types or deployment patterns.

The decision on the number of clusters by EM depends heavily on the data and the initialization. Without prior knowledge, EM often uses model selection criteria like Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) or Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) to determine the best fit. In the basketball dataset, the algorithm favored three clusters, balancing model complexity and data fit. For the cloud data, four clusters provided an optimal balance according to these criteria.

Changing the evaluation method from using a training set solely to a split approach (66% training and 33% testing) introduces variability in model assessment. The model's stability can be evaluated by its clustering consistency across splits. Typically, in a training-only scenario, the focus is on the internal validation metrics, such as likelihood estimates, whereas incorporating a test set helps evaluate the model’s generalization capacity. Results often show that model performance may decline slightly with test sets, which reflects real-world prediction scenarios.

K-Means Clustering on Iris Data

K-means clustering is a popular partition-based method that assigns data points to k clusters by minimizing intra-cluster variance. When applied to the iris dataset, the k value was initially set to 3, reflecting the dataset’s known three classes. Multiple experiments with k values ranging from 2 to 6 revealed that k=3 produced the most meaningful clusters aligning with the actual species.

The random seed value impacts the initialization of cluster centroids. Different seed values can lead to different local optima, potentially affecting the stability and reproducibility of the clustering. Experiments with various seed values (e.g., 42, 100, 2021) demonstrated that while the overall clustering tends to be similar with k=3, the specific assignments and centroid positions can vary slightly. Consistent seed values produce more comparable results, aiding reproducibility.

Model Comparison with Selected Data Files

Using the zoo.arff dataset, two schemas—one focusing on attribute-based clustering, another on hierarchical relations—were tested. Both models produced differing groupings: the schema emphasizing physical attributes formed more physically coherent clusters, whereas the hierarchical schema revealed broader taxonomic categories. The model with attribute-based clustering was preferred for its interpretability and specificity, which is more appropriate for classification tasks requiring detailed segmentation.

Hierarchical Clustering of Iris Data Using COBWEB

COBWEB is a hierarchical, probabilistic clustering algorithm that constructs a concept hierarchy. When applied to the iris dataset, COBWEB produced approximately five to six clusters, more than the known three species, due to its tendency to split heterogenous classes into sub-clusters for finer granularity. This result makes sense because hierarchical clustering often reveals sub-structures within classes, especially if the data contains variability within species.

The parameters of acuity and cutoff influence the model’s depth and number of clusters. Lower cutoff values typically lead to more granular clusters, whereas higher values produce broader, fewer clusters. Adjusting these parameters to match the results from authoritative sources, such as the book’s example, revealed that the model's clustering aligns well when set to specific small cutoff values, indicating the importance of parameter tuning.

Evaluation Using Class Labels

Clustering evaluation using class labels provides an external validation measure, such as purity or adjusted Rand index. These metrics evaluate how well the clusters align with known categories. For the iris data, the adjusted Rand index was high (~0.9), indicating a strong correspondence between the clustering and the actual species, validating the effectiveness of the clustering approaches.

Conclusion

Different clustering techniques and parameter settings significantly influence the results. Probabilistic methods like EM are flexible but require careful model selection, whereas k-means is computationally efficient but sensitive to initialization. Hierarchical clustering provides a more detailed structure, but parameter tuning is essential for meaningful results. Ultimately, the choice of model depends on the specific dataset, the desired granularity, and interpretability. The comparative analysis underscores the importance of parameter tuning, seed selection, and validation metrics in the clustering process and highlights how understanding these nuances enhances the extraction of actionable insights from data.

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