Cluster analysis of heterogeneous rank data

LM Busse, P Orbanz, JM Buhmann - Proceedings of the 24th …, 2007 - dl.acm.org
LM Busse, P Orbanz, JM Buhmann
Proceedings of the 24th international conference on Machine learning, 2007dl.acm.org
Cluster analysis of ranking data, which occurs in consumer questionnaires, voting forms or
other inquiries of preferences, attempts to identify typical groups of rank choices. Empirically
measured rankings are often incomplete, ie different numbers of filled rank positions cause
heterogeneity in the data. We propose a mixture approach for clustering of heterogeneous
rank data. Rankings of different lengths can be described and compared by means of a
single probabilistic model. A maximum entropy approach avoids hidden assumptions about …
Cluster analysis of ranking data, which occurs in consumer questionnaires, voting forms or other inquiries of preferences, attempts to identify typical groups of rank choices. Empirically measured rankings are often incomplete, i.e. different numbers of filled rank positions cause heterogeneity in the data. We propose a mixture approach for clustering of heterogeneous rank data. Rankings of different lengths can be described and compared by means of a single probabilistic model. A maximum entropy approach avoids hidden assumptions about missing rank positions. Parameter estimators and an efficient EM algorithm for unsupervised inference are derived for the ranking mixture model. Experiments on both synthetic data and real-world data demonstrate significantly improved parameter estimates on heterogeneous data when the incomplete rankings are included in the inference process.
ACM Digital Library