CODEWITHSUNDEEP
algorithmcluster-analysis
Irfan
Irfan

Reputation: 25

Can humans cluster data sets manually?clustering algorithms that are closest to the human clustering

Can human cluster data sets manually? For example, consider the Iris data set, depicted below:

https://i.sstatic.net/Ae6qa.png

Instead of using clustering algorithms like connectivity-based clustering (hierarchical clustering), centroid-based clustering, distribution-based clustering, density-based clustering. etc.

Can a human manually cluster the Iris dataset? For our convenience, let us consider it as a two dimensional dataset. By which means and how a human would cluster the dataset?


I am concerned that "human clustering" might not be well-defined and could vary according to different people's intuitions and opinions.I would like to know what are the clustering algorithms that are closest to the human clustering or how the data-set clustering is performed by humans? Is there a clustering algorithm that would perform just like the humans do the clustering?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 213

Answers (1)

John Percival Hackworth
John Percival Hackworth

Reputation: 11531

Humans can and do cluster data manually, but as you say there will be a lot of variation and subjective decisions. Assuming that you could get an algorithm that will use the same features as a human, it's in principle possible to have a computer cluster like a human.

At a first approximation, nearest neighbor algorithms are probably close to how humans cluster in they group things look similar under some measure. Keep in mind that without training and significant ongoing effort, humans really don't do well on consistency. We seem to be biased toward looking for novelty, so we tend to break things into two big clusters, the stuff we encounter all of the time, and everything else.

Upvotes: 0

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