ABSTRACT

Data clustering is a popular approach for automatically finding classes, concepts, or groups of patterns. Clustering aims at representing large datasets by a fewer number of prototypes or clusters. It brings simplicity in modeling data and thus plays a central role in the process of knowledge discovery and data mining. Data mining tasks require fast and accurate partitioning of huge datasets, which may come with a variety of attributes or features. This imposes severe computational requirements on the relevant clustering techniques. A family of bio-inspired algorithms, well-known as Swarm Intelligence (SI) has recently emerged that meets these requirements and has successfully been applied to a number of real world clustering problems. This paper looks into the use of Particle Swarm Optimization for cluster analysis. The effectiveness of Fuzzy C-means clustering provides enhanced performance and maintains more diversity in the swarm and also allows the particles to be robust to trace the changing environment.