MLlib - Clustering

Clustering
Examples

Clustering

Clustering is an unsupervised learning problem whereby we aim to group subsets of entities with one another based on some notion of similarity. Clustering is often used for exploratory analysis and/or as a component of a hierarchical supervised learning pipeline (in which distinct classifiers or regression models are trained for each cluster).

MLlib supports k-means clustering, one of the most commonly used clustering algorithms that clusters the data points into predefined number of clusters. The MLlib implementation includes a parallelized variant of the k-means++ method called kmeans||. The implementation in MLlib has the following parameters:

k is the number of desired clusters.
maxIterations is the maximum number of iterations to run.
initializationMode specifies either random initialization or initialization via k-means||.
runs is the number of times to run the k-means algorithm (k-means is not guaranteed to find a globally optimal solution, and when run multiple times on a given dataset, the algorithm returns the best clustering result).
initializationSteps determines the number of steps in the k-means|| algorithm.
epsilon determines the distance threshold within which we consider k-means to have converged.

Examples

The following code snippets can be executed in spark-shell.

In the following example after loading and parsing data, we use the KMeans object to cluster the data into two clusters. The number of desired clusters is passed to the algorithm. We then compute Within Set Sum of Squared Error (WSSSE). You can reduce this error measure by increasing k. In fact the optimal k is usually one where there is an “elbow” in the WSSSE graph.

import org.apache.spark.mllib.clustering.KMeans
import org.apache.spark.mllib.linalg.Vectors

// Load and parse the data
val data = sc.textFile("data/mllib/kmeans_data.txt")
val parsedData = data.map(s => Vectors.dense(s.split(' ').map(_.toDouble)))

// Cluster the data into two classes using KMeans
val numClusters = 2
val numIterations = 20
val clusters = KMeans.train(parsedData, numClusters, numIterations)

// Evaluate clustering by computing Within Set Sum of Squared Errors
val WSSSE = clusters.computeCost(parsedData)
println("Within Set Sum of Squared Errors = " + WSSSE)

All of MLlib’s methods use Java-friendly types, so you can import and call them there the same way you do in Scala. The only caveat is that the methods take Scala RDD objects, while the Spark Java API uses a separate JavaRDD class. You can convert a Java RDD to a Scala one by calling .rdd() on your JavaRDD object. A standalone application example that is equivalent to the provided example in Scala is given below:

import org.apache.spark.api.java.*;
import org.apache.spark.api.java.function.Function;
import org.apache.spark.mllib.clustering.KMeans;
import org.apache.spark.mllib.clustering.KMeansModel;
import org.apache.spark.mllib.linalg.Vector;
import org.apache.spark.mllib.linalg.Vectors;
import org.apache.spark.SparkConf;

public class KMeansExample {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    SparkConf conf = new SparkConf().setAppName("K-means Example");
    JavaSparkContext sc = new JavaSparkContext(conf);

    // Load and parse data
    String path = "data/mllib/kmeans_data.txt";
    JavaRDD<String> data = sc.textFile(path);
    JavaRDD<Vector> parsedData = data.map(
      new Function<String, Vector>() {
        public Vector call(String s) {
          String[] sarray = s.split(" ");
          double[] values = new double[sarray.length];
          for (int i = 0; i < sarray.length; i++)
            values[i] = Double.parseDouble(sarray[i]);
          return Vectors.dense(values);
        }
      }
    );

    // Cluster the data into two classes using KMeans
    int numClusters = 2;
    int numIterations = 20;
    KMeansModel clusters = KMeans.train(parsedData.rdd(), numClusters, numIterations);

    // Evaluate clustering by computing Within Set Sum of Squared Errors
    double WSSSE = clusters.computeCost(parsedData.rdd());
    System.out.println("Within Set Sum of Squared Errors = " + WSSSE);
  }
}

In order to run the above standalone application, follow the instructions provided in the Standalone Applications section of the Spark quick-start guide. Be sure to also include spark-mllib to your build file as a dependency.

The following examples can be tested in the PySpark shell.

In the following example after loading and parsing data, we use the KMeans object to cluster the data into two clusters. The number of desired clusters is passed to the algorithm. We then compute Within Set Sum of Squared Error (WSSSE). You can reduce this error measure by increasing k. In fact the optimal k is usually one where there is an “elbow” in the WSSSE graph.

from pyspark.mllib.clustering import KMeans
from numpy import array
from math import sqrt

# Load and parse the data
data = sc.textFile("data/mllib/kmeans_data.txt")
parsedData = data.map(lambda line: array([float(x) for x in line.split(' ')]))

# Build the model (cluster the data)
clusters = KMeans.train(parsedData, 2, maxIterations=10,
        runs=10, initializationMode="random")

# Evaluate clustering by computing Within Set Sum of Squared Errors
def error(point):
    center = clusters.centers[clusters.predict(point)]
    return sqrt(sum([x**2 for x in (point - center)]))

WSSSE = parsedData.map(lambda point: error(point)).reduce(lambda x, y: x + y)
print("Within Set Sum of Squared Error = " + str(WSSSE))