Plot Cluster Comparison¶
========================================================= Comparing different clustering algorithms on toy datasets¶
This example shows characteristics of different clustering algorithms on datasets that are “interesting” but still in 2D. With the exception of the last dataset, the parameters of each of these dataset-algorithm pairs has been tuned to produce good clustering results. Some algorithms are more sensitive to parameter values than others.
The last dataset is an example of a ‘null’ situation for clustering: the data is homogeneous, and there is no good clustering. For this example, the null dataset uses the same parameters as the dataset in the row above it, which represents a mismatch in the parameter values and the data structure.
While these examples give some intuition about the algorithms, this intuition might not apply to very high dimensional data.
Imports for Comparing Clustering Algorithms on Toy Datasets¶
This comprehensive comparison evaluates 11 clustering algorithms – MiniBatchKMeans, AffinityPropagation, MeanShift, SpectralClustering, Ward, AgglomerativeClustering, DBSCAN, HDBSCAN, OPTICS, BIRCH, and GaussianMixture – across 6 synthetic datasets with varying geometries (circles, moons, anisotropic blobs, unequal variance, uniform blobs, and unstructured noise). Each algorithm embodies a different inductive bias: centroid-based methods (KMeans, BIRCH) assume spherical clusters, density-based methods (DBSCAN, HDBSCAN, OPTICS, MeanShift) discover arbitrary shapes, graph-based methods (SpectralClustering, Ward) leverage connectivity structure, and model-based methods (GaussianMixture) fit parametric distributions.
Key insights from this comparison: No single clustering algorithm dominates across all data geometries. DBSCAN and SpectralClustering excel on non-convex shapes (circles, moons) where KMeans fails, but DBSCAN struggles with varying densities. Ward hierarchical clustering with a connectivity constraint respects local spatial structure. The kneighbors_graph is used to build a sparse connectivity matrix that restricts agglomerative merges to spatially adjacent points, preventing long-range jumps. The StandardScaler normalization ensures all algorithms operate on comparable feature scales, and execution times are displayed to highlight the computational cost differences between algorithms.
# Authors: The scikit-learn developers
# SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
import time
import warnings
from itertools import cycle, islice
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from sklearn import cluster, datasets, mixture
from sklearn.neighbors import kneighbors_graph
from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler
# ============
# Generate datasets. We choose the size big enough to see the scalability
# of the algorithms, but not too big to avoid too long running times
# ============
n_samples = 500
seed = 30
noisy_circles = datasets.make_circles(
n_samples=n_samples, factor=0.5, noise=0.05, random_state=seed
)
noisy_moons = datasets.make_moons(n_samples=n_samples, noise=0.05, random_state=seed)
blobs = datasets.make_blobs(n_samples=n_samples, random_state=seed)
rng = np.random.RandomState(seed)
no_structure = rng.rand(n_samples, 2), None
# Anisotropicly distributed data
random_state = 170
X, y = datasets.make_blobs(n_samples=n_samples, random_state=random_state)
transformation = [[0.6, -0.6], [-0.4, 0.8]]
X_aniso = np.dot(X, transformation)
aniso = (X_aniso, y)
# blobs with varied variances
varied = datasets.make_blobs(
n_samples=n_samples, cluster_std=[1.0, 2.5, 0.5], random_state=random_state
)
# ============
# Set up cluster parameters
# ============
plt.figure(figsize=(9 * 2 + 3, 13))
plt.subplots_adjust(
left=0.02, right=0.98, bottom=0.001, top=0.95, wspace=0.05, hspace=0.01
)
plot_num = 1
default_base = {
"quantile": 0.3,
"eps": 0.3,
"damping": 0.9,
"preference": -200,
"n_neighbors": 3,
"n_clusters": 3,
"min_samples": 7,
"xi": 0.05,
"min_cluster_size": 0.1,
"allow_single_cluster": True,
"hdbscan_min_cluster_size": 15,
"hdbscan_min_samples": 3,
"random_state": 42,
}
datasets = [
(
noisy_circles,
{
"damping": 0.77,
"preference": -240,
"quantile": 0.2,
"n_clusters": 2,
"min_samples": 7,
"xi": 0.08,
},
),
(
noisy_moons,
{
"damping": 0.75,
"preference": -220,
"n_clusters": 2,
"min_samples": 7,
"xi": 0.1,
},
),
(
varied,
{
"eps": 0.18,
"n_neighbors": 2,
"min_samples": 7,
"xi": 0.01,
"min_cluster_size": 0.2,
},
),
(
aniso,
{
"eps": 0.15,
"n_neighbors": 2,
"min_samples": 7,
"xi": 0.1,
"min_cluster_size": 0.2,
},
),
(blobs, {"min_samples": 7, "xi": 0.1, "min_cluster_size": 0.2}),
(no_structure, {}),
]
for i_dataset, (dataset, algo_params) in enumerate(datasets):
# update parameters with dataset-specific values
params = default_base.copy()
params.update(algo_params)
X, y = dataset
# normalize dataset for easier parameter selection
X = StandardScaler().fit_transform(X)
# estimate bandwidth for mean shift
bandwidth = cluster.estimate_bandwidth(X, quantile=params["quantile"])
# connectivity matrix for structured Ward
connectivity = kneighbors_graph(
X, n_neighbors=params["n_neighbors"], include_self=False
)
# make connectivity symmetric
connectivity = 0.5 * (connectivity + connectivity.T)
# ============
# Create cluster objects
# ============
ms = cluster.MeanShift(bandwidth=bandwidth, bin_seeding=True)
two_means = cluster.MiniBatchKMeans(
n_clusters=params["n_clusters"],
random_state=params["random_state"],
)
ward = cluster.AgglomerativeClustering(
n_clusters=params["n_clusters"], linkage="ward", connectivity=connectivity
)
spectral = cluster.SpectralClustering(
n_clusters=params["n_clusters"],
eigen_solver="arpack",
affinity="nearest_neighbors",
random_state=params["random_state"],
)
dbscan = cluster.DBSCAN(eps=params["eps"])
hdbscan = cluster.HDBSCAN(
min_samples=params["hdbscan_min_samples"],
min_cluster_size=params["hdbscan_min_cluster_size"],
allow_single_cluster=params["allow_single_cluster"],
copy=True,
)
optics = cluster.OPTICS(
min_samples=params["min_samples"],
xi=params["xi"],
min_cluster_size=params["min_cluster_size"],
)
affinity_propagation = cluster.AffinityPropagation(
damping=params["damping"],
preference=params["preference"],
random_state=params["random_state"],
)
average_linkage = cluster.AgglomerativeClustering(
linkage="average",
metric="cityblock",
n_clusters=params["n_clusters"],
connectivity=connectivity,
)
birch = cluster.Birch(n_clusters=params["n_clusters"])
gmm = mixture.GaussianMixture(
n_components=params["n_clusters"],
covariance_type="full",
random_state=params["random_state"],
)
clustering_algorithms = (
("MiniBatch\nKMeans", two_means),
("Affinity\nPropagation", affinity_propagation),
("MeanShift", ms),
("Spectral\nClustering", spectral),
("Ward", ward),
("Agglomerative\nClustering", average_linkage),
("DBSCAN", dbscan),
("HDBSCAN", hdbscan),
("OPTICS", optics),
("BIRCH", birch),
("Gaussian\nMixture", gmm),
)
for name, algorithm in clustering_algorithms:
t0 = time.time()
# catch warnings related to kneighbors_graph
with warnings.catch_warnings():
warnings.filterwarnings(
"ignore",
message="the number of connected components of the "
"connectivity matrix is [0-9]{1,2}"
" > 1. Completing it to avoid stopping the tree early.",
category=UserWarning,
)
warnings.filterwarnings(
"ignore",
message="Graph is not fully connected, spectral embedding"
" may not work as expected.",
category=UserWarning,
)
algorithm.fit(X)
t1 = time.time()
if hasattr(algorithm, "labels_"):
y_pred = algorithm.labels_.astype(int)
else:
y_pred = algorithm.predict(X)
plt.subplot(len(datasets), len(clustering_algorithms), plot_num)
if i_dataset == 0:
plt.title(name, size=18)
colors = np.array(
list(
islice(
cycle(
[
"#377eb8",
"#ff7f00",
"#4daf4a",
"#f781bf",
"#a65628",
"#984ea3",
"#999999",
"#e41a1c",
"#dede00",
]
),
int(max(y_pred) + 1),
)
)
)
# add black color for outliers (if any)
colors = np.append(colors, ["#000000"])
plt.scatter(X[:, 0], X[:, 1], s=10, color=colors[y_pred])
plt.xlim(-2.5, 2.5)
plt.ylim(-2.5, 2.5)
plt.xticks(())
plt.yticks(())
plt.text(
0.99,
0.01,
("%.2fs" % (t1 - t0)).lstrip("0"),
transform=plt.gca().transAxes,
size=15,
horizontalalignment="right",
)
plot_num += 1
plt.show()