EDACluster: an Evolutionary Density and Grid-Based Clustering Algorithm

This paper presents EDACluster, an estimation of distribution algorithm (EDA) applied to the clustering task. EDA is an evolutionary algorithm used here to optimize the search for adequate clusters when very little is known about the target dataset. The proposed algorithm uses a mixed approach - density and grid- based - to identify sets of dense cells in the dataset. The output is a list of items and their associated clusters. Items in low-density areas are considered noise and are not assigned to any cluster. This work uses four public domain datasets to perform the tests that compare EDACluster with DBSCAN, a conventional density-based clustering algorithm.