A weighted Cramér’s V Index for the assessment of stability in the fuzzy clustering of class C G protein-coupled receptors

Abstract

After decades of intensive use, K-Means is still a common choice for crisp data clustering in real-world applications, particularly in biomedicine and bioinformatics. It is well-known that different initializations of the algorithm can lead to different solutions, precluding replicability. It has also been reported that even solutions with very similar errors may widely differ. A criterion for the choice of clustering solutions according to a combination of error and stability measures has recently been suggested. It is based on the use of Cramér’s V index, calculated from contingency tables, which is valid only for crisp clustering. Here, this criterion is extended to fuzzy and probabilistic clustering by first defining weighted contingency tables and a corresponding weighted Cramér’s V index. The proposed method is illustrated using Fuzzy C-Means in a proteomics problem.