Credibilistic Clustering: The Model and Algorithms

Fuzzy clustering is a widely used approach for data classification by using the fuzzy set theory. The probability measure and the possibility measure are two popular measures which have been used in the fuzzy c-means algorithm (FCM) and the possibilistic clustering algorithms (PCAs), respectively. However, the numerical experiments revealed that FCM and its derivatives lack the intuitive concept of degree of belongingness, and PCAs suffer from the “coincident problem” and cannot provide very stable results for some data sets. In this study, we propose a new clustering algorithm, called the credibilistic clustering algorithm (CCA), based on the credibility measure. The credibility measure provides some unique properties which can solve the “coincident problem” and noise issue compared with the probability measure and possibility measure. Based on some randomly generated data sets, experimental results compared with FCM and PCA show that CCA can deal with the “coincident problem” with good clustering results, and it is more robust to noise than PCA.