Spectral Ensemble Clustering

Abstract

Ensemble clustering, also known as consensus clustering, is emerging as a promising solution for multi-source and/or heterogeneous data clustering. The co-association matrix based method, which redefines the ensemble clustering problem as a classical graph partition problem, is a landmark method in this area. Nevertheless, the relatively high time and space complexity preclude it from real-life large-scale data clustering. We therefore propose SEC, an efficient Spectral Ensemble Clustering method based on co-association matrix. We show that SEC has theoretical equivalence to weighted K-means clustering and results in vastly reduced algorithmic complexity. We then derive the latent consensus function of SEC, which to our best knowledge is among the first to bridge co-association matrix based method to the methods with explicit object functions. The robustness and generalizability of SEC are then investigated to prove the superiority of SEC in theory. We finally extend SEC to meet the challenge rising from incomplete basic partitions, based on which a scheme for big data clustering can be formed. Experimental results on various real-world data sets demonstrate that SEC is an effective and efficient competitor to some state-of-the-art ensemble clustering methods and is also suitable for big data clustering.