R: Partitioning Around Medoids

pam {cluster} | R Documentation

## Partitioning Around Medoids

### Description

Partitioning (clustering) of the data into `k` clusters ``around medoids'', a more robust version of K-means.

### Usage

    pam(x, k, diss = inherits(x, "dist"), metric = "euclidean",
        medoids = NULL, stand = FALSE, cluster.only = FALSE,
        do.swap = TRUE,
        keep.diss = !diss && !cluster.only && n < 100,
        keep.data = !diss && !cluster.only, trace.lev = 0)

### Arguments

`x` | data matrix or data frame, or dissimilarity matrix or object, depending on the value of the `diss` argument. In case of a matrix or data frame, each row corresponds to an observation, and each column corresponds to a variable. All variables must be numeric. Missing values (`NA`s) are allowed—as long as every pair of observations has at least one case not missing. In case of a dissimilarity matrix, `x` is typically the output of `daisy` or `dist`. Also a vector of length n*(n-1)/2 is allowed (where n is the number of observations), and will be interpreted in the same way as the output of the above-mentioned functions. Missing values (NAs) are not allowed.
`k` | positive integer specifying the number of clusters, less than the number of observations.
`diss` | logical flag: if TRUE (default for `dist` or `dissimilarity` objects), then `x` will be considered as a dissimilarity matrix. If FALSE, then `x` will be considered as a matrix of observations by variables.
`metric` | character string specifying the metric to be used for calculating dissimilarities between observations. The currently available options are "euclidean" and "manhattan". Euclidean distances are root sum-of-squares of differences, and manhattan distances are the sum of absolute differences. If `x` is already a dissimilarity matrix, then this argument will be ignored.
`medoids` | NULL (default) or length-`k` vector of integer indices (in `1:n`) specifying initial medoids instead of using the ‘build’ algorithm.
`stand` | logical; if true, the measurements in `x` are standardized before calculating the dissimilarities. Measurements are standardized for each variable (column), by subtracting the variable's mean value and dividing by the variable's mean absolute deviation. If `x` is already a dissimilarity matrix, then this argument will be ignored.
`cluster.only` | logical; if true, only the clustering will be computed and returned, see details.
`do.swap` | logical indicating if the swap phase should happen. The default, `TRUE`, correspond to the original algorithm. On the other hand, the swap phase is much more computer intensive than the build one for large n, so can be skipped by `do.swap = FALSE`.
`keep.diss, keep.data` | logicals indicating if the dissimilarities and/or input data `x` should be kept in the result. Setting these to `FALSE` can give much smaller results and hence even save memory allocation time.
`trace.lev` | integer specifying a trace level for printing diagnostics during the build and swap phase of the algorithm. Default `0` does not print anything; higher values print increasingly more.

### Details

`pam` is fully described in chapter 2 of Kaufman and Rousseeuw (1990). Compared to the k-means approach in `kmeans`, the function `pam` has the following features: (a) it also accepts a dissimilarity matrix; (b) it is more robust because it minimizes a sum of dissimilarities instead of a sum of squared euclidean distances; (c) it provides a novel graphical display, the silhouette plot (see `plot.partition`) (d) it allows to select the number of clusters using `mean(silhouette(pr))` on the result `pr <- pam(..)`, or directly its component `pr$silinfo$avg.width`, see also `pam.object`.

When `cluster.only` is true, the result is simply a (possibly named) integer vector specifying the clustering, i.e.,
`pam(x,k, cluster.only=TRUE)` is the same as
`pam(x,k)$clustering` but computed more efficiently.

The `pam`-algorithm is based on the search for `k` representative objects or medoids among the observations of the dataset. These observations should represent the structure of the data. After finding a set of `k` medoids, `k` clusters are constructed by assigning each observation to the nearest medoid. The goal is to find `k` representative objects which minimize the sum of the dissimilarities of the observations to their closest representative object.
By default, when `medoids` are not specified, the algorithm first looks for a good initial set of medoids (this is called the build phase). Then it finds a local minimum for the objective function, that is, a solution such that there is no single switch of an observation with a medoid that will decrease the objective (this is called the swap phase).

When the `medoids` are specified, their order does not matter; in general, the algorithms have been designed to not depend on the order of the observations.

### Value

an object of class `"pam"` representing the clustering. See `?pam.object` for details.

### Note

For large datasets, `pam` may need too much memory or too much computation time since both are O(n^2). Then, `clara()` is preferable, see its documentation.

### See Also

`agnes` for background and references; `pam.object`, `clara`, `daisy`, `partition.object`, `plot.partition`, `dist`.

### Examples

    ## generate 25 objects, divided into 2 clusters.
    x <- rbind(cbind(rnorm(10,0,0.5), rnorm(10,0,0.5)),
               cbind(rnorm(15,5,0.5), rnorm(15,5,0.5)))
    pamx <- pam(x, 2)
    pamx
    summary(pamx)
    plot(pamx)
    ## use obs. 1 & 16 as starting medoids -- same result (typically)
    (p2m <- pam(x, 2, medoids = c(1,16)))

    p3m <- pam(x, 3, trace = 2)
    ## rather stupid initial medoids:
    (p3m. <- pam(x, 3, medoids = 3:1, trace = 1))

    pam(daisy(x, metric = "manhattan"), 2, diss = TRUE)

    data(ruspini)
    ## Plot similar to Figure 4 in Stryuf et al (1996)
    ## Not run: plot(pam(ruspini, 4), ask = TRUE)

[Package cluster version 1.11.11 Index]