How to compute cluster assignments from linkage/distance matrices - python

if you have this hierarchical clustering call in scipy in Python:
from scipy.cluster.hierarchy import linkage
# dist_matrix is long form distance matrix
linkage_matrix = linkage(squareform(dist_matrix), linkage_method)
then what's an efficient way to go from this to cluster assignments for individual points? i.e. a vector of length N where N is number of points, where each entry i is the cluster number of point i, given the number of clusters generated by a given threshold thresh on the resulting clustering?
To clarify: The cluster number would be the cluster that it's in after applying a threshold to the tree. In which case you would get a unique cluster for each leaf node for the cluster that it is in. Unique in the sense that each point belongs to one "most specific cluster" which is defined by the threshold where you cut the dendrogram.
I know that scipy.cluster.hierarchy.fclusterdata gives you this cluster assignment as its return value, but I am starting from a custom made distance matrix and distance metric, so I cannot use fclusterdata. The question boils down to: how can I compute what fclusterdata is computing -- the cluster assignments?

If I understand you right, that is what fcluster does:
scipy.cluster.hierarchy.fcluster(Z, t, criterion='inconsistent', depth=2, R=None, monocrit=None)
Forms flat clusters from the hierarchical clustering defined by the linkage matrix Z.
...
Returns: An array of length n. T[i] is the flat cluster number to which original observation i belongs.
So just call fcluster(linkage_matrix, t), where t is your threshold.

Related

Is k-means++ meant to be perfect every time? What other initialization strategies can yield the best k-means?

I've implemented a k-means algorithm and performance is highly dependent on how centroids were initialized. I'm finding random uniform initialization to give a good k-means about 5% of the time, whereas with k-means++, it's closer to 50%. Why is the yield for good k-means so low? I should disclaim I've only used a handful of data sets and my good/bad rates are indicative of only those, not broadly.
Here's an example using k-means++ where the end result was not great. The Dunn Index of this clustering is 0.16.
And an example where it worked perfectly with a Dunn Index of 0.67.
I was maybe under the naive impression k-means++ produced a good k-means every time. Is there perhaps something wrong with my code?
def initialize_centroids(points, k):
"""
Parameters:
points : a list of Points.
k : how many centroids to place.
Returns:
A list of centroids.
"""
clusters = []
clusters.append(choice(points)) # first centroid is random point
for _ in range(k - 1): # for other centroids
distances = []
for p in points:
d = inf
for c in clusters: # find the minimal distance between p and c
d = min(d, distance(p, c))
distances.append(d)
# find maximum distance index from minimal distances
clusters.append(points[distances.index(max(distances))])
return clusters
This is adapted from the algorithm as found on Wikipedia:
Choose one center uniformly at random from among the data points.
For each data point x, compute D(x), the distance between x and the nearest center that has already been chosen.
Choose one new data point at random as a new center, using a weighted probability distribution where a point x is chosen with probability proportional to D(x)2.
Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until k centers have been chosen.
Now that the initial centers have been chosen, proceed using standard k-means clustering.
The difference is the centroids are chosen such that it is the furthest distance, not a probability to choose between furthest distances.
My intention is to compare the Dunn Index over different values of k, and empirically the Dunn Index being higher means better clustering. I can't collect (good) data if half of the time it doesn't work, so my results are skewed due to the faultiness of k-means++ or my implementation thereof.
What other initialization strategies can be employed to get a more consistent result?

Computing Nearest neighbor graph using sklearn?

This question is about creating a K-nearest neighbor graph [KNNG] from a dataset with an unknown number of centroids (which is not the same as K-means clustering).
Suppose that you have a dataset of observations stored in a data matrix X[n_samples, n_features] with each row being an observation or feature vector and each column being a feature. Now suppose you want to compute the (weighted) k-Neighbors graph for points in X using sklearn.neighbors.kneighbors_graph.
What are the basic methods to pick the number of neighbors to use for each sample? What algorithms scale well when you have lots of observations?
I have seen this brute force method below but it doesn't do well when the sample dataset size becomes large and you have to pick a good starting upper bound for n_neighbors_max. Does this algorithm have a name?
def autoselect_K(X, n_neighbors_max, threshold):
# get the pairwise euclidean distance between every observation
D = sklearn.metrics.pairwise.euclidean_distances(X, X)
chosen_k = n_neighbors_max
for k in range(2, n_neighbors_max):
k_avg = []
# loop over each row in the distance matrix
for row in D:
# sort the row from smallest distance to largest distance
sorted_row = numpy.sort(row)
# calculate the mean of the smallest k+1 distances
k_avg.append(numpy.mean(sorted_row[0:k]))
# find the median of the averages
kmedian_dist = numpy.median(k_avg)
if kmedian_dist >= threshold:
chosen_k = k
break
# return the number of nearest neighbors to use
return chosen_k
From your code, it appears that you are looking for a classification result based on the nearest neighbour.
In such a case your search over the distance matrix is akin to a brute force search and defeats the purpose of Nearest neighbour algorithms.
Perhaps what you are looking for is the NNClassifier. Here https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.neighbors.KNeighborsClassifier.html
Regarding the choice of the number of nearest neighbours, this depends on the sparsity of your data. It helps to view Nearest Neighbour as a way to bound your search. Rather than look over all samples. It will allow you
to narrow the search to the top-N (nearest neighbour) samples. Afterward
you can apply a domain specific technique on these N samples to get the desired result.

How to use networkx graphs as input for sklearn

I want to apply sklearn graph clustering algorithms but they don't accept input from networkx in .gexf format. What kind of library/transformations do I need to turn my .gexf graphs suitable for sklearn?
Cluster algorithms accept either distance matrices, affinity matrices, or feature matrices. For example, kmeans would accept a feature matrix (say X of n points of m dimensions) and apply the Euclidean distance metric, while affinity propagation accepts an affinity matrix (i.e. a square matrix D of nxn dimensions) or a feature matrix (depending on the affinity parameter).
If you want to apply a sklearn (or just non-graph) cluster algorithm, you can extract adjacency matrices from networkx graphs.
A = nx.to_scipy_sparse_matrix(G)
I guess you should make sure, your diagonal is 1; do numpy.fill_diagonal(D, 1) if not.
This then leaves only applying the clustering algorithm:
from sklearn.cluster import AffinityPropagation
ap = AffinityPropagation(affinity='precomputed').fit(A)
print(ap.labels_)
You can also convert your adjacency matrix to a distance matrix if you want to apply other algorithms or even project your adjacency/distance matrix to a feature matrix.
To go through all of this would go too far, however, as for getting the distance matrix, if you have binary edges, you can do D = 1 - A; if you have weighted edges you could D = A.max() - A.

scipy kmeans -- how to get actual threshold between clusters

Using scipy kmeans I can get the centroids of my clusters with
centroids, variance = kmeans(pixel,3)
and also an array showing which value is assigned to which cluster:
code, distance = vq(features, centroids)
But how do I get the actual threshold values separating the clusters from each other? Is there any variable or command containing these?
thanks for any advice
K-means does not use numerical thresholds.
Every point belongs to the closest cluster, so the "threshold" is the hyperplane (see "Voronoi diagram" in Wikipedia) inbetween of the two nearest cluster centers.

Can i get features of the clusters using hierarchical clustering - numpy

I am trying to do hierarchical clustering on an m*n array.
Input array : 500 * 1000 (1000 features, 500 observations)
Calculate distance matrix using a self-defined pdist function
Feed this distance matrix to linkage function :
clusters = sch.linkage(distanceMatrix,'single')
Form flat clusters :
fc = sch.fcluster(clusters,cutoff,'distance')
This gives me some clusters (around 80, using a cutoff value of 6.0).
Now, is there anyway, that i can get the 1000 features corresponding to each cluster as well? ( like we get the features of the centroids using K-means clustering).
Clusters in hierarchical clustering (or pretty much anything except k-means and Gaussian Mixture EM that are restricted to "spherical" - actually: convex - clusters) do not necessarily have sensible means.
Because they allow for non-spherical clusters. That actually is a feature...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_analysis#Connectivity_based_clustering_.28hierarchical_clustering.29
Have a look at the right image titled "Linkage clustering examples". What good is a cluster in this "banana" example? The centroid might not even be in the cluster!
Note that you can still compute the centroid yourself, if you need it. As the clustering algorithm does not need the centroid, it will not be computing it for you automatically, obviously.

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