Interface ClusteringAlgorithm<T>

Type Parameters:
T - The element type being clustered.
All Known Implementing Classes:
AutomaticClusterer, FeatureBasedClusterer, GeneralisedKMeans, GreedyClusterer, GreedyClustering, KMeansClusterer, RandomClustering, SpectralClusterer
Functional Interface:
This is a functional interface and can therefore be used as the assignment target for a lambda expression or method reference.
@FunctionalInterface public interface ClusteringAlgorithm<T>
Strategy interface for clustering algorithms.

Implementations partition a collection of items into disjoint, non-empty clusters. Each cluster is represented as a Set<T> containing the items assigned to that cluster; the result of cluster(Collection) is a List<Set<T>> with one set per cluster. Unless otherwise stated by a specific implementation, the following apply:

  • Each input item appears in exactly one cluster (no overlap). - The order of clusters and the order of items within a cluster are unspecified.
  • The result contains no empty clusters.
  • Implementations may be deterministic or randomized and may impose additional preconditions on the input.
Thread-safety: Implementations are not required to be thread-safe.

  • Method Summary

    Modifier and Type
    Method
    Description
    List<Set<T>>
    cluster(Collection<T> input)
    Partitions the given items into clusters.

  • Method Details

    • cluster

      List<Set<T>> cluster(Collection<T> input)
      Partitions the given items into clusters.
      Parameters:
      input - The items to cluster; must not be null. May be empty.
      Returns:
      A list of clusters; each element of the list is a Set<T> representing one cluster and containing its members. Sets are non-empty and pairwise disjoint; ordering is unspecified.
      Throws:
      IllegalArgumentException - If implementation-specific preconditions are violated.