A novel data clustering algorithm based on modified gravitational search algorithm

Data clustering is a popular analysis tool for data statistics in many fields such as pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning, image analysis, and bioinformatics. The aim of data clustering is to represent large datasets by a fewer number of prototypes or clusters, which brings simplicity in modeling data and thus plays a central role in the process of knowledge discovery and data mining. In this paper, a novel data clustering algorithm based on modified Gravitational Search Algorithm is proposed, which is called Bird Flock Gravitational Search Algorithm (BFGSA). The BFGSA introduces a new mechanism into GSA to add diversity, a mechanism which is inspired by the collective response behavior of birds. This mechanism performs its diversity enhancement through three main steps including initialization, identification of the nearest neighbors, and orientation change. The initialization is to generate candidate populations for the second steps and the orientation change updates the position of objects based on the nearest neighbors. Due to the collective response mechanism, the BFGSA explores a wider range of the search space and thus escapes suboptimal solutions. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through 13 real benchmark datasets from the well-known UCI Machine Learning Repository. Its performance is compared with the standard GSA, the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), the Firefly Algorithm (FA), K-means, and other four clustering algorithms from the literature. The simulation results indicate that the BFGSA can effectively be used for data clustering.