Hello Henry, There are cirteria which are not technique related, like the rand index, or better, the adjusted rand index. I did a lot with technique related ciretia (fuzzy c-means) and a generel outcome of my experiments was that different techniques aplid to a single data set reslulted in as many different outcome.... best regards, jacco Noordam ----------------------------------------------------------------------- J.C. Noordam Agrotechnological Reseach Institute (ATO) Department Production & Control Systems P.O.Box 17,6700 AA Wageningen, the Netherlands http://www.ato.wageningen-ur.nl email: [log in to unmask] tel: +31.317.475139 fax: +31.317.475347 A few references to validity related articles: @article{ 181, Author = {Bezdek, J.C.}, Title = {Cluster validity with fuzzy sets}, Journal = {Journal of Cybernetics}, Volume = {3}, Number = {3}, Pages = {58-73}, Keywords = {cluster validity clustering}, Year = {1974} } @article{ 284, Author = {Bezdek, James C. and Pal, Nikhil R.}, Title = {Some new indexes of cluster validity}, Journal = {IEEE transactions on systems, man and cybernetics}, Volume = {28}, Number = {3}, Pages = {301-315}, Keywords = {cluster validity clustering K-means}, Year = {1998} } @article{ 514, Author = {Bondarenko, I. and Malderen, H. van and Treiger, B. and Espen, P. van and Grieken, R. van}, Title = {Hierarchical cluster analysis with stopping rules built on Akaike's information criterion for aerosol particle classification based on electron probe X-ray microanalysis}, Journal = {Chemometrics and intelligent laboratory systems}, Volume = {22}, Pages = {87-95}, Keywords = {hierarchical clustering X-ray cluster validity}, Year = {1994} } @article{ 133, Author = {Dave, Rajesh N.}, Title = {Validating fuzzy partitions obtained through c-shells clustering}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition Letters}, Volume = {17}, Pages = {613-623}, Keywords = {cluster validity Shell clustering fuzzy clustering}, Year = {1996} } @article{ 196, Author = {Dave, Rajesh N. and Krishnapuram, Raghu}, Title = {Robust clustering methods : A Unified view}, Journal = {IEEE transactions on fuzzy systems}, Volume = {5}, Number = {2}, Pages = {270-293}, Keywords = {cluster validity fuzzy clustering}, Year = {1997} } @article{ 151, Author = {Frigui, Hichem and Krishnapuram, Raghu}, Title = {A robust algorithm for automatic extraction of a unknown number of clusters from noisy data}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition Letters}, Volume = {17}, Number = {12}, Pages = {1223-1232}, Keywords = {fuzzy clustering cluster validity}, Year = {1996} } @article{ 153, Author = {Frigui, Hichem and Krishnapuram, Raghu}, Title = {Clustering by competitive agglomeration}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition}, Volume = {30}, Number = {7}, Pages = {1109-1119}, Keywords = {fuzzy clustering cluster validity}, Year = {1997} } @article{ 44, Author = {Gath, I and Geva, A.B.}, Title = {Unsupervised optimal fuzzy clustering}, Journal = {IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence}, Volume = {11}, Number = {7}, Pages = {773-781}, Keywords = {fuzzy clustering cluster validity}, Year = {1989} } @article{ 266, Author = {Geva, A.B. and Steinberg, Yossef and Bruckmair, Shay and Nahum, Gerry}, Title = {A comparison of cluster validity criteria for a mixture of normal distributed data}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition Letters}, Volume = {21}, Pages = {511-529}, Keywords = {cluster validity Unsupervised learning clustering}, Year = {2000} } @article{ 468, Author = {Herbin, M. and Bonnet, Noel and Vautrot, P.}, Title = {Estimating of the number of clusters and influence zones}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition Letters}, Volume = {22}, Pages = {1557-1568}, Keywords = {clustering hierarchical clustering cluster validity}, Year = {2001} } @article{ 195, Author = {Kothari, Ravi and Pitts, Dax}, Title = {On finding the number of clusters}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition Letters}, Volume = {20}, Pages = {405-416}, Keywords = {clustering cluster validity}, Year = {1999} } @article{ 128, Author = {Nakamura, Eiji and Kehtarnavaz, Nasser}, Title = {Determinating number of clusters and prototype locations via multi-scale clustering}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition Letters}, Volume = {19}, Number = {12}, Pages = {1265-1283}, Keywords = {clustering cluster validity}, Year = {1998} } @article{ 122, Author = {Pal, Nikhil R. and Bezdek, James C.}, Title = {On cluster validity for the fuzzy c-means model}, Journal = {IEEE transactions on fuzzy systems}, Volume = {3}, Number = {3}, Pages = {370-379}, Keywords = {cluster validity Fuzzy C-means}, Year = {1995} } @article{ 123, Author = {Pal, Nikhil R. and Bezdek, James C.}, Title = {Correction to On cluster validity for the fuzzy c-means model}, Journal = {IEEE transactions on fuzzy systems}, Volume = {5}, Number = {1}, Pages = {152-153}, Keywords = {Fuzzy C-means clustering cluster validity}, Year = {1997} } @article{ 112, Author = {Rezaee, M. Ramze and Lelieveldt, B.P.F. and Reiber, J.H.C.}, Title = {A new cluster validity index for the fuzzy c-mean}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition Letters}, Volume = {19}, Pages = {237-246}, Keywords = {cluster validity clustering Fuzzy C-means}, Year = {1998} } @article{ 48, Author = {Windham, Michael P.}, Title = {Cluster validity for the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm}, Journal = {IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence}, Volume = {4}, Number = {4}, Pages = {357-363}, Keywords = {Fuzzy C-means cluster validity fuzzy clustering}, Year = {1982} } @article{ 124, Author = {Xie, Xuanli Lisa and Beni, Gerardo}, Title = {A Validity measure for fuzzy clustering}, Journal = {IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence}, Volume = {13}, Number = {8}, Pages = {841-847}, Keywords = {cluster validity Fuzzy C-means clustering}, Year = {1991} } @article{ 199, Author = {Yang, M.S}, Title = {A survey of fuzzy clustering}, Journal = {Mathematical and computer modeling}, Volume = {18}, Number = {11}, Pages = {1-16}, Keywords = {clustering clustering technique fuzzy clustering Fuzzy C-means cluster validity}, Year = {1993} } @article{ 665, Author = {Yeung, K.Y. and Haynor, D.R. and Ruzzo, W.L.}, Title = {Validating clustering for gene expression data}, Journal = {Bioinformatics}, Volume = {17}, Number = {4}, Pages = {309-318}, Keywords = {clustering gene data cluster validity}, Year = {2001} } @article{ 186, Author = {Zahid, N. and Limouri, M. and Essaid, A.}, Title = {A new cluster-validity for fuzzy clustering}, Journal = {Pattern Recognition}, Volume = {32}, Pages = {1089-1097}, Keywords = {fuzzy clustering cluster validity fuzzy separation}, Year = {1999} } -----Original Message----- From: Henry Bulley [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: maandag 22 september 2003 22:04 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: cluster validation criteria Hello, Has anyone evaluated the performance of relative criteria with respect to internal and external criteria in validating the outcome of cluster analysis? I will also appreciate any pointers to credible literature sources. Henry