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Sharon M. McNicholas

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An Evolutionary Algorithm with Crossover and Mutation for Model-Based Clustering

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Oct 31, 2018
Sharon M. McNicholas, Paul D. McNicholas, Daniel A. Ashlock

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The expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm is almost ubiquitous for parameter estimation in model-based clustering problems; however, it can become stuck at local maxima, due to its single path, monotonic nature. Rather than using an EM algorithm, an evolutionary algorithm (EA) is developed. This EA facilitates a different search of the fitness landscape, i.e., the likelihood surface, utilizing both crossover and mutation. Furthermore, this EA represents an efficient approach to "hard" model-based clustering and so it can be viewed as a sort of generalization of the k-means algorithm, which is itself equivalent to a classification EM algorithm for a Gaussian mixture model with spherical component covariances. The EA is illustrated on several data sets, and its performance is compared to k-means clustering as well as model-based clustering with an EM algorithm.

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