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Encyclopedia of Machine Learning pp 154–159Cite as

Categorical Data Clustering

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Synonyms

Clustering of nonnumerical data; Grouping

Definition

Data clustering is informally defined as the problem of partitioning a set of objects into groups, such that the objects in the same group are similar, while the objects in different groups are dissimilar. Categorical data clustering refers to the case where the data objects are defined over categorical attributes. A categorical attribute is an attribute whose domain is a set of discrete values that are not inherently comparable. That is, there is no single ordering or inherent distance function for the categorical values, and there is no mapping from categorical to numerical values that is semantically meaningful.

Motivation and Background

Clustering is a problem of great practical importance that has been the focus of substantial research in several domains for decades. As storage capacities grow, we have at hand larger amounts of data available for analysis and mining. Clustering plays an instrumental role in this...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

    Authors
    1. Periklis Andritsos
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    2. Panayiotis Tsaparas
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    Editor information

    Editors and Affiliations

    1. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2052

      Claude Sammut

    2. Faculty of Information Technology, Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University, P.O. Box 63, Victoria, Australia, 3800

      Geoffrey I. Webb

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    © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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    Andritsos, P., Tsaparas, P. (2011). Categorical Data Clustering. In: Sammut, C., Webb, G.I. (eds) Encyclopedia of Machine Learning. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30164-8_99

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