Genetic algorithms for auto-clustering in KDD

In solving the clustering problem in the context of knowledge discovery in databases (KDD), the traditional methods, for example, the K-means algorithm and its variants, usually require the users to provide the number of clusters in advance based on the pro-information. Unfortunately, the number of clusters in general is unknown to the users who are usually short of pro-information. Therefore, the clustering calculation becomes a tedious trial-and-error work, and the result is often not global optimal especially when the number of clusters is large. In this paper, a new dynamic clustering method based on genetic algorithms (GA) is proposed and applied for auto-clustering of data entities in large databases. The algorithm can automatically cluster the data according to their similarities and find the exact number of clusters. Experiment results indicate that the method is of global optimization by dynamically clustering logic.