Clustering analysis using Opposition-Based API algorithm

Clustering is a significant data mining task which partitions datasets based on similarities among data. In this study, partitional clustering is considered as an optimization problem and an improved ant-based algorithm, named Opposition-Based API (after the name of Pachycondyla APIcalis ants), is applied to automatic grouping of large unlabeled datasets. The proposed algorithm employs Opposition-Based Learning (OBL) for ants' hunting sites generation phase in API. Experimental results are compared with the classical API clustering algorithm and three other recently evolutionary-based clustering techniques. It is shown that the proposed algorithm can achieve the optimal number of clusters and, in most cases, outperforms the other methods on several benchmark datasets in terms of accuracy and convergence speed.