Cogitative Analysis on K-Means Clustering Algorithm and its Variants

Abstract: Rapid advancements in science and technology resulted in the accumulation of enormous amount data. This facilitated the need for new methods for extracting essential data from these huge bulks of data since the old method of query ing proved to be inadequate. As a result many data analysis methods came in to existence and Cluster analysis is one among them. Cluster analysis has found its application in almost all fields especially in Bioinformatics, Image processing, Pattern Recognition etc. Cluster analysis or clustering can be defined as the process of grouping up of data objects in to different sets. It is done in such a way that the objects in the same group exhibit similar properties. There are several clustering algorithms available. The most widely used and popular clustering algorithm is the k-means clustering algorithm. This paper focuses on a survey of k-means clustering algorithm and its variants.

Keywords: Clusters, Cluster Analysis, k-means, k-modes, k-medoids