A MapReduce-based K-means clustering algorithm

The partitioning-based k-means clustering is one of the most important clustering algorithms. However, in big data environment, it faces the problems of random selection of initial cluster centers randomly, expensive communication overhead among MapReduce nodes and data skewing in data partitions, and others. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a parallel clustering algorithm based on grid density and local sensitive hash function (MR-PGDLSH) which takes into account the advantages of MapReduce and LSH (locality sensitive hash function). In the MR-PGDLSH, firstly the GDS (grid density strategy) is designed to obtain the relatively reasonable initial cluster centers. Then, a DP-LSH (data partition based on locality sensitive hash function) is proposed to divide the data set into multiple segments. The relevant data objects are mapped to the same sub-data set. The similarity function is designed to generate clusters, thereby reducing frequent communication overhead between nodes. Next, the AGS (adaptive grouping strategy) is applied to distribute the amount of data on each node evenly, which solves the problem of data skew on the node. Finally, the MR-PGDLSH is applied to mine the cluster centers in parallel, which obtains the final clustering results. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results have shown that the MR-PGDLSH is superior to the existing clustering algorithms.