On-line relational SOM for dissimilarity data

International audienceIn some applications and in order to address real world situations better, data may be more complex than simple vectors. In some examples, they can be known through their pairwise dissimilarities only. Several variants of the Self Organizing Map algorithm were introduced to generalize the original algorithm to this framework. Whereas median SOM is based on a rough representation of the prototypes, relational SOM allows representing these prototypes by a virtual combination of all elements in the data set. However, this latter approach suffers from two main drawbacks. First, its complexity can be large. Second, only a batch version of this algorithm has been studied so far and it often provides results having a bad topographic organization. In this article, an on-line version of relational SOM is described and justified. The algorithm is tested on several datasets, including categorical data and graphs, and compared with the batch version and with other SOM algorithms for non vector data

Theoretical and applied aspects of the self-organizing maps

International audienceThe Self-Organizing Map (SOM) is widely used, easy to implement , has nice properties for data mining by providing both clustering and visual representation. It acts as an extension of the k-means algorithm that preserves as much as possible the topological structure of the data. However, since its conception, the mathematical study of the SOM remains difficult and has be done only in very special cases. In WSOM 2005, Jean-Claude Fort presented the state of the art, the main remaining difficulties and the mathematical tools that can be used to obtain theoretical results on the SOM outcomes. These tools are mainly Markov chains, the theory of Ordinary Differential Equations, the theory of stability , etc. This article presents theoretical advances made since then. In addition, it reviews some of the many SOM algorithm variants which were defined to overcome the theoretical difficulties and/or adapt the algorithm to the processing of complex data such as time series, missing values in the data, nominal data, textual data, etc