Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, 3rd Edition

11.4 Clustering with Constraints

Users often have background knowledge that they want to integrate into cluster analysis. There may also be application-specific requirements. Such information can be modeled as clustering constraints. We approach the topic of clustering with constraints in two steps. Section 11.4.1 categorizes the types of constraints for clustering graph data. Methods for clustering with constraints are introduced in Section 11.4.2.

11.4.1 Categorization of Constraints

This section studies how to categorize the constraints used in cluster analysis. Specifically, we can categorize constraints according to the subjects on which they are set, or on how strongly the constraints are to be enforced.

As discussed in Chapter 10, cluster ...