Clustering Large Datasets Using Data Stream Clustering Techniques

Abstract. Unsupervised identification of groups in large data sets is important for many machine learning and knowledge discovery applications. Conventional clustering approaches (kmeans, hierarchical clustering, etc.) typically do not scale well for very large data sets. In recent years, data stream clustering algorithms have been proposed which can deal efficiently with potentially unbounded streams of data. This paper is the first to investigate the use of data stream clustering algorithms as lightweight alternatives to conventional algorithms on large non-streaming data. We will discuss important issue including order dependence and report the results of an initial study using several synthetic and real-world data sets.