Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-Learning

So far, most of the semi-supervised clustering algorithms focus on finding a suitable partition that well satisfies the given constraints. However, insufficient supervisory information may lead to over-fitting results and unstable performance, especially on complicated data. To address this challeng...

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Main Author: Xin Sun
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-05-01
Series:Mathematics
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Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/13/9/1535
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author Xin Sun
author_facet Xin Sun
author_sort Xin Sun
collection DOAJ
description So far, most of the semi-supervised clustering algorithms focus on finding a suitable partition that well satisfies the given constraints. However, insufficient supervisory information may lead to over-fitting results and unstable performance, especially on complicated data. To address this challenge, this paper attempts to solve the semi-supervised clustering problem by self-learning sufficient constraints. The essential motivation is that constraints can be learned from the local neighbor structures within appropriate feature spaces, and sufficient constraints can directly divide the data into clusters. Hence, we first present a constraint self-learning framework. It performs an expectation–maximization procedure iteratively between exploring a discriminant space and learning new constraints. Then, a constraint-based clustering algorithm is proposed by taking advantage of sufficient constraints. Experimental studies on various real-world benchmark datasets show that the proposed algorithm achieves promising performance and outperforms the state-of-the-art semi-supervised clustering algorithms.
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spelling doaj-art-c450b2c604114b9290a5ce81f19b0fd02025-08-20T01:49:28ZengMDPI AGMathematics2227-73902025-05-01139153510.3390/math13091535Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-LearningXin Sun0Faculty of Data Science, City University of Macau, Macao SAR 999078, ChinaSo far, most of the semi-supervised clustering algorithms focus on finding a suitable partition that well satisfies the given constraints. However, insufficient supervisory information may lead to over-fitting results and unstable performance, especially on complicated data. To address this challenge, this paper attempts to solve the semi-supervised clustering problem by self-learning sufficient constraints. The essential motivation is that constraints can be learned from the local neighbor structures within appropriate feature spaces, and sufficient constraints can directly divide the data into clusters. Hence, we first present a constraint self-learning framework. It performs an expectation–maximization procedure iteratively between exploring a discriminant space and learning new constraints. Then, a constraint-based clustering algorithm is proposed by taking advantage of sufficient constraints. Experimental studies on various real-world benchmark datasets show that the proposed algorithm achieves promising performance and outperforms the state-of-the-art semi-supervised clustering algorithms.https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/13/9/1535semi-supervised clusteringself-propagationpartial discriminant spaces
spellingShingle Xin Sun
Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-Learning
Mathematics
semi-supervised clustering
self-propagation
partial discriminant spaces
title Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-Learning
title_full Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-Learning
title_fullStr Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-Learning
title_full_unstemmed Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-Learning
title_short Semi-Supervised Clustering via Constraints Self-Learning
title_sort semi supervised clustering via constraints self learning
topic semi-supervised clustering
self-propagation
partial discriminant spaces
url https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/13/9/1535
work_keys_str_mv AT xinsun semisupervisedclusteringviaconstraintsselflearning