A comprehensive, coherent, and in depth presentation of the state of the art in fuzzy clustering. Fuzzy clustering is now a mature and vibrant area of research with highly innovative advanced applications. Encapsulating this through presenting a careful selection of research contributions, this book addresses timely and relevant concepts and methods, whilst identifying major challenges and recent developments in the area. Split into five clear sections, Fundamentals, Visualization, Algorithms and Computational Aspects, Real-Time and Dynamic Clustering, and Applications and Case Studies, the book covers a wealth of novel, original and fully updated material, and in particular offers: a focus on the algorithmic and computational augmentations of fuzzy clustering and its effectiveness in handling high dimensional problems, distributed problem solving and uncertainty management. presentations of the important and relevant phases of cluster design, including the role of information granules, fuzzy sets in the realization of human-centricity facet of data analysis, as well as system modelling demonstrations of how the results facilitate further detailed development of models, and enhance interpretation aspects a carefully organized illustrative series of applications and case studies in which fuzzy clustering plays a pivotal role This book will be of key interest to engineers associated with fuzzy control, bioinformatics, data mining, image processing, and pattern recognition, while computer engineers, students and researchers, in most engineering disciplines, will find this an invaluable resource and research tool.

Recently many researchers are working on cluster analysis as a main tool for exploratory data analysis and data mining. A notable feature is that specialists in di?erent ?elds of sciences are considering the tool of data clustering to be useful. A major reason is that clustering algorithms and software are ?exible in thesensethatdi?erentmathematicalframeworksareemployedinthealgorithms and a user can select a suitable method according to his application. Moreover clusteringalgorithmshavedi?erentoutputsrangingfromtheolddendrogramsof agglomerativeclustering to more recent self-organizingmaps. Thus, a researcher or user can choose an appropriate output suited to his purpose,which is another ?exibility of the methods of clustering. An old and still most popular method is the K-means which use K cluster centers. A group of data is gathered around a cluster center and thus forms a cluster. The main subject of this book is the fuzzy c-means proposed by Dunn and Bezdek and their variations including recent studies. A main reasonwhy we concentrate on fuzzy c-means is that most methodology and application studies infuzzy clusteringusefuzzy c-means,andfuzzy c-meansshouldbe consideredto beamajortechniqueofclusteringingeneral,regardlesswhetheroneisinterested in fuzzy methods or not. Moreover recent advances in clustering techniques are rapid and we requirea new textbook that includes recent algorithms.We should also note that several books have recently been published but the contents do not include some methods studied herein.

Dieser Band konzentriert sich auf Konzepte, Algorithmen und Anwendungen des Fuzzy Clustering. In sich geschlossen werden Techniken wie das Fuzzy-c-Mittel und die Gustafson-Kessel- und Gath- und Gava-Algorithmen behandelt, wobei vom Leser keine Vorkenntnisse auf dem Gebiet von Fuzzy-Systemen erwartet werden. Durch anschauliche Anwendungsbeispiele eignet sich das Buch als Einführung für Praktiker der Datenanalyse, der Bilderkennung und der angewandten Mathematik. (05/99)

This book presents the most recent advances in fuzzy clustering techniques and their applications. The contents include Introduction to Fuzzy Clustering; Fuzzy Clustering based Principal Component Analysis; Fuzzy Clustering based Regression Analysis; Kernel based Fuzzy Clustering; Evaluation of Fuzzy Clustering; Self-Organized Fuzzy Clustering. This book is directed to the computer scientists, engineers, scientists, professors and students of engineering, science, computer science, business, management, avionics and related disciplines.

The fuzzy set was conceived as a result of an attempt to come to grips with the problem of pattern recognition in the context of imprecisely defined categories. In such cases, the belonging of an object to a class is a matter of degree, as is the question of whether or not a group of objects form a cluster. A pioneering application of the theory of fuzzy sets to cluster analysis was made in 1969 by Ruspini. It was not until 1973, however, when the appearance of the work by Dunn and Bezdek on the Fuzzy ISODATA (or fuzzy c-means) algorithms became a landmark in the theory of cluster analysis, that the relevance of the theory of fuzzy sets to cluster analysis and pattern recognition became clearly established. Since then, the theory of fuzzy clustering has developed rapidly and fruitfully, with the author of the present monograph contributing a major share of what we know today. In their seminal work, Bezdek and Dunn have introduced the basic idea of determining the fuzzy clusters by minimizing an appropriately defined functional, and have derived iterative algorithms for computing the membership functions for the clusters in question. The important issue of convergence of such algorithms has become much better understood as a result of recent work which is described in the monograph.

Fuzzy set theory - and its underlying fuzzy logic - represents one of the most significant scientific and cultural paradigms to emerge in the last half-century. Its theoretical and technological promise is vast, and we are only beginning to experience its potential. Clustering is the first and most basic application of fuzzy set theory, but forms the basis of many, more sophisticated, intelligent computational models, particularly in pattern recognition, data mining, adaptive and hierarchical clustering, and classifier design. Fuzzy Sets and their Application to Clustering and Training offers a comprehensive introduction to fuzzy set theory, focusing on the concepts and results needed for training and clustering applications. It provides a unified mathematical framework for fuzzy classification and clustering, a methodology for developing training and classification methods, and a general method for obtaining a variety of fuzzy clustering algorithms. The authors - top experts from around the world - combine their talents to lay a solid foundation for applications of this powerful tool, from the basic concepts and mathematics through the study of various algorithms, to validity functionals and hierarchical clustering. The result is Fuzzy Sets and their Application to Clustering and Training - an outstanding initiation into the world of fuzzy learning classifiers and fuzzy clustering.

An authoritative guide to an in-depth analysis of various state-of-the-art data clustering approaches using a range of computational intelligence techniques Recent Advances in Hybrid Metaheuristics for Data Clustering offers a guide to the fundamentals of various metaheuristics and their application to data clustering. Metaheuristics are designed to tackle complex clustering problems where classical clustering algorithms have failed to be either effective or efficient. The authors noted experts on the topic provide a text that can aid in the design and development of hybrid metaheuristics to be applied to data clustering. The book includes performance analysis of the hybrid metaheuristics in relationship to their conventional counterparts. In addition to providing a review of data clustering, the authors include in-depth analysis of different optimization algorithms. The text offers a step-by-step guide in the build-up of hybrid metaheuristics and to enhance comprehension. In addition, the book contains a range of real-life case studies and their applications. This important text: Includes performance analysis of the hybrid metaheuristics as related to their conventional counterparts Offers an in-depth analysis of a range of optimization algorithms Highlights a review of data clustering Contains a detailed overview of different standard metaheuristics in current use Presents a step-by-step guide to the build-up of hybrid metaheuristics Offers real-life case studies and applications Written for researchers, students and academics in computer science, mathematics, and engineering, Recent Advances in Hybrid Metaheuristics for Data Clustering provides a text that explores the current data clustering approaches using a range of computational intelligence techniques.