Gravitational search algorithm with heuristic search for clustering problems

In this paper, we present an efficient algorithm for cluster analysis, which is based on gravitational search and a heuristic search algorithm. In the proposed algorithm, called GSA-HS, the gravitational search algorithm is used to find a near optimal solution for clustering problem, and then at the next step a heuristic search algorithm is applied to improve the initial solution by searching around it. Four benchmark datasets are used to evaluate and to compare the performance of the presented algorithm with two other famous clustering algorithms, i.e. K-means and particle swarm optimization algorithm. The results show that the proposed algorithm can find high quality clusters in all the tested datasets.