Bootstrapping Self-Organizing Maps to assess the statistical significance of local proximity

One of the attractive feature of Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) is the so-called "topological preservation property": observations that are close to each other in the input space (at least locally) remain close to each other in the SOM. In this work, we propose the use of a bootstrap scheme to construct a statistical significance test of the observed proximity among individuals in the SOM. While computer intensive at this stage, this work represents a first step in the exploration of the sampling distribution of proximities in the framework of the SOM algorithm.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ESANN
• Authors: Eric de Bodt, Marie Cottrell
• Keywords: ESANN 2000, ESANN 2007, SOM Algorithm, Statistical Significance Test, Topological Preservation Property