In the custom k-means algorithm, data points are classified based on their proximity to the centroids. This process involves calculating the distance between each data point and the centroids, and then assigning the data point to the cluster with the closest centroid.
To classify the data points, the algorithm follows these steps:
1. Initialization: The algorithm starts by randomly selecting K initial centroids from the dataset. K is the number of clusters desired.
2. Assignment: Each data point is assigned to the cluster whose centroid is closest to it. The distance between a data point and a centroid can be calculated using various distance metrics, such as Euclidean distance or Manhattan distance.
3. Update: After all data points have been assigned to clusters, the centroids are updated based on the mean of the data points in each cluster. The new centroid position is calculated as the average of the coordinates of all data points in that cluster.
4. Repeat: Steps 2 and 3 are repeated iteratively until convergence. Convergence occurs when the centroids no longer change significantly or when a maximum number of iterations is reached.
Let's illustrate this process with a simple example. Suppose we have a dataset with 100 data points and we want to cluster them into 3 clusters using the custom k-means algorithm.
1. Initialization: We randomly select 3 data points as the initial centroids.
2. Assignment: For each data point, we calculate the distance to each centroid and assign it to the closest cluster. For instance, if a data point is closest to the first centroid, it will be assigned to the first cluster.
3. Update: After all data points have been assigned to clusters, we update the centroids by calculating the mean of the data points in each cluster. The new centroids represent the center of each cluster.
4. Repeat: We repeat steps 2 and 3 until convergence. In each iteration, the data points are re-assigned to clusters based on the updated centroids, and the centroids are recalculated based on the new cluster assignments. This process continues until convergence or until a maximum number of iterations is reached.
By the end of the algorithm, each data point will be assigned to one of the clusters based on its proximity to the centroids. The resulting clusters are formed by grouping together data points that are similar to each other in terms of their distance to the centroids.
The custom k-means algorithm classifies data points based on their proximity to the centroids. It assigns each data point to the cluster with the closest centroid and updates the centroids iteratively until convergence is achieved.
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