Benchmarking in cluster analysis: A white paper

Abstract

Note: A revised version of this is now published. Please cite and read (it's open access): Van Mechelen, I., Boulesteix, A.-L., Dangl, R., Dean, N., Hennig, C., Leisch, F., Steinley, D., Warrens, M. J. (2023). A white paper on good research practices in benchmarking: The case of cluster analysis. WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, e1511. https://doi.org/10.1002/widm.1511 To achieve scientific progress in terms of building a cumulative body of knowledge, careful attention to benchmarking is of the utmost importance. This means that proposals of new methods of data pre-processing, new data-analytic techniques, and new methods of output post-processing, should be extensively and carefully compared with existing alternatives, and that existing methods should be subjected to neutral comparison studies. To date, benchmarking and recommendations for benchmarking have been frequently seen in the context of supervised learning. Unfortunately, there has been a dearth of guidelines for benchmarking in an unsupervised setting, with the area of clustering as an important subdomain. To address this problem, discussion is given to the theoretical conceptual underpinnings of benchmarking in the field of cluster analysis by means of simulated as well as empirical data. Subsequently, the practicalities of how to address benchmarking questions in clustering are dealt with, and foundational recommendations are made.