Validation of overlapping clustering: A random clustering perspective

As a widely used clustering validation measure, the F-measure has received increased attention in the field of information retrieval. In this paper, we reveal that the F-measure can lead to biased views as to results of overlapped clusters when it is used for validating the data with different cluster numbers (incremental effect) or different prior probabilities of relevant documents (prior-probability effect). We propose a new “IMplication Intensity” (IMI) measure which is based on the F-measure and is developed from a random clustering perspective. In addition, we carefully investigate the properties of IMI. Finally, experimental results on real-world data sets show that IMI significantly alleviates biased incremental and prior-probability effects which are inherent to the F-measure.