Comparison of cluster validation indices with missing data

Abstract

Clustering is an unsupervised machine learning technique, which aims to divide a given set of data into subsets. The number of hidden groups in cluster analysis is not always obvious and, for this purpose, various cluster validation indices have been suggested. Recently some studies reviewing validation indices have been provided, but any experiments against missing data are not yet available. In this paper, performance of ten well-known indices on ten synthetic data sets with various ratios of missing values is measured using squared euclidean and city block distances based clustering. The original indices are modified for a city block distance in a novel way. Experiments illustrate the different degree of stability for the indices with respect to the missing data.