Cluster ensembles

Cluster ensembles combine multiple clusterings of a set of objects into a single consolidated clustering, often referred to as the consensus solution. Consensus clustering can be used to generate more robust and stable clustering results compared to a single clustering approach, perform distributed computing under privacy or sharing constraints, or reuse existing knowledge. This paper describes a variety of algorithms that have been proposed to address the cluster ensemble problem, organizing them in conceptual categories that bring out the common threads and lessons learnt while simultaneously highlighting unique features of individual approaches. C © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2011 1 305–315 DOI: 10.1002/widm.32