An improved K-medoids clustering approach based on the crow search algorithm

Abstract

K-medoids clustering algorithm is a simple yet effective algorithm that has been applied to solve many clustering problems. Instead of using the mean point as the centre of a cluster, K-medoids uses an actual point to represent it. Medoid is the most centrally located object of the cluster, with a minimum sum of distances to other points. K-medoids can correctly represent the cluster centre as it is robust to outliers. However, the K-medoids algorithm is unsuitable for clustering arbitrary shaped groups of objects and large scale datasets. This is because it uses compactness as a clustering criterion instead of connectivity. An improved k-medoids algorithm based on the crow search algorithm is proposed to overcome the above problems. This research uses the crow search algorithm to improve the balance between the exploration and exploitation process of the K-medoids algorithm. Experimental result comparison shows that the proposed improved algorithm performs better than other competitors.