A genetic k-medoids clustering algorithm

We propose a hybrid genetic algorithm for k-medoids clustering. A novel heuristic operator is designed and integrated with the genetic algorithm to fine-tune the search. Further, variable length individuals that encode different number of medoids (clusters) are used for evolution with a modified Davies-Bouldin index as a measure of the fitness of the corresponding partitionings. As a result the proposed algorithm can efficiently evolve appropriate partitionings while making no a priori assumption about the number of clusters present in the datasets. In the experiments, we show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and compare it with other related clustering methods.