CURE: An Efficient Clustering Algorithm for Large Databases

Clustering, in data mining, is useful for discovering groups and identifying interesting distributions in the underlying data. Traditional clustering algorithms either favor clusters with spherical shapes and similar sizes, or are very fragile in the presence of outliers. We propose a new clustering algorithm called CURE that is more robust to outliers, and identifies clusters having non-spherical shapes and wide variances in size. CURE achieves this by representing each cluster by a certain fixed number of points that are generated by selecting well scattered points from the cluster and then shrinking them toward the center of the cluster by a specified fraction. Having more than one representative point per cluster allows CURE to adjust well to the geometry of non-spherical shapes and the shrinking helps to dampen the effects of outliers. To handle large databases, CURE employs a combination of random sampling and partitioning. A random sample drawn from the data set is first partit...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: SIGMOD
• Authors: Sudipto Guha, Rajeev Rastogi, Kyuseok Shim
• Keywords: Clustering Algorithm, Database, Non-spherical Shapes, SIGMOD 1998, Traditional Clustering Algorithms