The author discusses a shift in approach to clustering mixed data, advocating for starting with the simpler Gower distance metric before resorting to more complex embedding techniques like UMAP. They introduce 'Gower Express', an optimized and accelerated implementation of Gower.
This example demonstrates Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) using scikit-learn, showing how to generate synthetic clusters, compute DBSCAN clustering, and visualize the results, including core and non-core samples.
Comparing Clustering Algorithms
Following table will give a comparison (based on parameters, scalability and metric) of the clustering algorithms in scikit-learn.
Sr.No Algorithm Name Parameters Scalability Metric Used
1 K-Means No. of clusters Very large n_samples The distance between points.
2 Affinity Propagation Damping It’s not scalable with n_samples Graph Distance
3 Mean-Shift Bandwidth It’s not scalable with n_samples. The distance between points.
4 Spectral Clustering No.of clusters Medium level of scalability with n_samples. Small level of scalability with n_clusters. Graph Distance
5 Hierarchical Clustering Distance threshold or No.of clusters Large n_samples Large n_clusters The distance between points.
6 DBSCAN Size of neighborhood Very large n_samples and medium n_clusters. Nearest point distance
7 OPTICS Minimum cluster membership Very large n_samples and large n_clusters. The distance between points.
8 BIRCH Threshold, Branching factor Large n_samples Large n_clusters The Euclidean distance between points.
Following table will give a comparison (based on parameters, scalability and metric) of the clustering algorithms in scikit-learn.
Sr.No Algorithm Name Parameters Scalability Metric Used
1 K-Means No. of clusters Very large n_samples The distance between points.
2 Affinity Propagation Damping It’s not scalable with n_samples Graph Distance
3 Mean-Shift Bandwidth It’s not scalable with n_samples. The distance between points.
4 Spectral Clustering No.of clusters Medium level of scalability with n_samples. Small level of scalability with n_clusters. Graph Distance
5 Hierarchical Clustering Distance threshold or No.of clusters Large n_samples Large n_clusters The distance between points.
6 DBSCAN Size of neighborhood Very large n_samples and medium n_clusters. Nearest point distance
7 OPTICS Minimum cluster membership Very large n_samples and large n_clusters. The distance between points.
8 BIRCH Threshold, Branching factor Large n_samples Large n_clusters The Euclidean distance between points.
