Campus Units
Statistics
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2012
Journal or Book Title
Journal of Statistical Software
Volume
51
Issue
12
First Page
1
Last Page
25
DOI
10.18637/jss.v051.i12
Abstract
The R package MixSim is a new tool that allows simulating mixtures of Gaussian distributions with different levels of overlap between mixture components. Pairwise overlap, defined as a sum of two misclassification probabilities, measures the degree of interaction between components and can be readily employed to control the clustering complexity of datasets simulated from mixtures. These datasets can then be used for systematic performance investigation of clustering and finite mixture modeling algorithms. Among other capabilities of MixSim, there are computing the exact overlap for Gaussian mixtures, simulating Gaussian and non-Gaussian data, simulating outliers and noise variables, calculating various measures of agreement between two partitionings, and constructing parallel distribution plots for the graphical display of finite mixture models. All features of the package are illustrated in great detail. The utility of the package is highlighted through a small comparison study of several popular clustering algorithms.
Rights
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright Owner
The Authors
Copyright Date
2012
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Melnykov, Volodymyr; Chen, Wei-Chen; and Maitra, Ranjan, "MixSim: An R Package for Simulating Data to Study Performance of Clustering Algorithms" (2012). Statistics Publications. 70.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/stat_las_pubs/70
Comments
This is an article from Journal of Statistical Software 51 (2012): doi: 10.18637/jss.v051.i12. Posted with permission.