提出新方法评估数据集标签与真实聚类的匹配度,提升聚类验证可靠性。
Measuring the Validity of Clustering Validation Datasets
- 设计调整版内部验证指标,跨数据集比较标签与聚类匹配度。
- 实验表明调整后指标在12个数据集上更准确评估聚类质量。
- 适用于构建更可信的聚类基准测试数据集,适合算法评估者使用。
聚类算法常通过带有类别标签的基准数据集进行验证,但标签未必对应真实聚类,导致验证失准。本文提出调整后的内部验证指标(Adjusted IVMs),用于跨数据集评估标签-聚类匹配度(CLM)。基于四个独立于非聚类属性(如维度、规模)的公理,建立标准化转换协议,将六种常用内部指标(Silhouette、Davies-Bouldin、Calinski-Harabasz、DBI、DI、SC)转化为满足公理的版本。定量实验在12个数据集上验证:调整后指标显著优于原始指标,且在跨数据集比较中表现更稳定。结果表明该方法可用于筛选或优化数据集,构建更可靠的聚类验证基准。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Clustering techniques are often validated using benchmark datasets where class labels are used as ground-truth clusters. However, depending on the datasets, class labels may not align with the actual data clusters, and such misalignment hampers accurate validation. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate and compare datasets regarding their cluster-label matching (CLM), i.e., how well their class labels match actual clusters. Internal validation measures (IVMs), like Silhouette, can compare CLM over different labeling of the same dataset, but are not designed to do so across different datasets. We thus introduce Adjusted IVMs as fast and reliable methods to evaluate and compare CLM across datasets. We establish four axioms that require validation measures to be independent of data properties not related to cluster structure (e.g., dimensionality, dataset size). Then, we develop standardized protocols to convert any IVM to satisfy these axioms, and use these protocols to adjust six widely used IVMs. Quantitative experiments (1) verify the necessity and effectiveness of our protocols and (2) show that adjusted IVMs outperform the competitors, including standard IVMs, in accurately evaluating CLM both within and across datasets. We also show that the datasets can be filtered or improved using our method to form more reliable benchmarks for clustering validation.
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