Python – Understanding “score” returned by scikit-learn KMeans

k-meanspythonscikit-learn

I applied clustering on a set of text documents (about 100). I converted them to Tfidf vectors using TfIdfVectorizer and supplied the vectors as input to scikitlearn.cluster.KMeans(n_clusters=2, init='k-means++', max_iter=100, n_init=10). Now when I

model.fit()
print model.score()

on my vectors, I get a very small value if all the text documents are very similar, and I get a very large negative value if the documents are very different.

It serves my basic purpose of finding which set of documents are similar, but can someone help me understand what exactly does this model.score() value signify for a fit? How can I use this value to justify my findings?

Best Answer

In the documentation it says:

Returns:    
score : float
Opposite of the value of X on the K-means objective.

To understand what that means you need to have a look at the k-means algorithm. What k-means essentially does is find cluster centers that minimize the sum of distances between data samples and their associated cluster centers.

It is a two-step process, where (a) each data sample is associated to its closest cluster center, (b) cluster centers are adjusted to lie at the center of all samples associated to them. These steps are repeated until a criterion (max iterations / min change between last two iterations) is met.

As you can see there remains a distance between the data samples and their associated cluster centers, and the objective of our minimization is that distance (sum of all distances).

You naturally get large distances if you have a big variety in data samples, if the number of data samples is significantly higher than the number of clusters, which in your case is only two. On the contrary, if all data samples were the same, you would always get a zero distance regardless of number of clusters.

From the documentation I would expect that all values are negative, though. If you observe both negative and positive values, maybe there is more to the score than that.

I wonder how you got the idea of clustering into two clusters though.

Relation to `slice()` object

The slicing operator [] is actually being used in the above code with a slice() object using the : notation (which is only valid within []), i.e.:

a[start:stop:step]

is equivalent to:

a[slice(start, stop, step)]

Slice objects also behave slightly differently depending on the number of arguments, similarly to range(), i.e. both slice(stop) and slice(start, stop[, step]) are supported. To skip specifying a given argument, one might use None, so that e.g. a[start:] is equivalent to a[slice(start, None)] or a[::-1] is equivalent to a[slice(None, None, -1)].

While the :-based notation is very helpful for simple slicing, the explicit use of slice() objects simplifies the programmatic generation of slicing.

Python – Is it possible to specify your own distance function using scikit-learn K-Means Clustering

Here's a small kmeans that uses any of the 20-odd distances in scipy.spatial.distance, or a user function.
Comments would be welcome (this has had only one user so far, not enough); in particular, what are your N, dim, k, metric ?

#!/usr/bin/env python
# kmeans.py using any of the 20-odd metrics in scipy.spatial.distance
# kmeanssample 2 pass, first sample sqrt(N)

from __future__ import division
import random
import numpy as np
from scipy.spatial.distance import cdist  # $scipy/spatial/distance.py
    # http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/spatial.html
from scipy.sparse import issparse  # $scipy/sparse/csr.py

__date__ = "2011-11-17 Nov denis"
    # X sparse, any cdist metric: real app ?
    # centres get dense rapidly, metrics in high dim hit distance whiteout
    # vs unsupervised / semi-supervised svm

#...............................................................................
def kmeans( X, centres, delta=.001, maxiter=10, metric="euclidean", p=2, verbose=1 ):
    """ centres, Xtocentre, distances = kmeans( X, initial centres ... )
    in:
        X N x dim  may be sparse
        centres k x dim: initial centres, e.g. random.sample( X, k )
        delta: relative error, iterate until the average distance to centres
            is within delta of the previous average distance
        maxiter
        metric: any of the 20-odd in scipy.spatial.distance
            "chebyshev" = max, "cityblock" = L1, "minkowski" with p=
            or a function( Xvec, centrevec ), e.g. Lqmetric below
        p: for minkowski metric -- local mod cdist for 0 < p < 1 too
        verbose: 0 silent, 2 prints running distances
    out:
        centres, k x dim
        Xtocentre: each X -> its nearest centre, ints N -> k
        distances, N
    see also: kmeanssample below, class Kmeans below.
    """
    if not issparse(X):
        X = np.asanyarray(X)  # ?
    centres = centres.todense() if issparse(centres) \
        else centres.copy()
    N, dim = X.shape
    k, cdim = centres.shape
    if dim != cdim:
        raise ValueError( "kmeans: X %s and centres %s must have the same number of columns" % (
            X.shape, centres.shape ))
    if verbose:
        print "kmeans: X %s  centres %s  delta=%.2g  maxiter=%d  metric=%s" % (
            X.shape, centres.shape, delta, maxiter, metric)
    allx = np.arange(N)
    prevdist = 0
    for jiter in range( 1, maxiter+1 ):
        D = cdist_sparse( X, centres, metric=metric, p=p )  # |X| x |centres|
        xtoc = D.argmin(axis=1)  # X -> nearest centre
        distances = D[allx,xtoc]
        avdist = distances.mean()  # median ?
        if verbose >= 2:
            print "kmeans: av |X - nearest centre| = %.4g" % avdist
        if (1 - delta) * prevdist <= avdist <= prevdist \
        or jiter == maxiter:
            break
        prevdist = avdist
        for jc in range(k):  # (1 pass in C)
            c = np.where( xtoc == jc )[0]
            if len(c) > 0:
                centres[jc] = X[c].mean( axis=0 )
    if verbose:
        print "kmeans: %d iterations  cluster sizes:" % jiter, np.bincount(xtoc)
    if verbose >= 2:
        r50 = np.zeros(k)
        r90 = np.zeros(k)
        for j in range(k):
            dist = distances[ xtoc == j ]
            if len(dist) > 0:
                r50[j], r90[j] = np.percentile( dist, (50, 90) )
        print "kmeans: cluster 50 % radius", r50.astype(int)
        print "kmeans: cluster 90 % radius", r90.astype(int)
            # scale L1 / dim, L2 / sqrt(dim) ?
    return centres, xtoc, distances

#...............................................................................
def kmeanssample( X, k, nsample=0, **kwargs ):
    """ 2-pass kmeans, fast for large N:
        1) kmeans a random sample of nsample ~ sqrt(N) from X
        2) full kmeans, starting from those centres
    """
        # merge w kmeans ? mttiw
        # v large N: sample N^1/2, N^1/2 of that
        # seed like sklearn ?
    N, dim = X.shape
    if nsample == 0:
        nsample = max( 2*np.sqrt(N), 10*k )
    Xsample = randomsample( X, int(nsample) )
    pass1centres = randomsample( X, int(k) )
    samplecentres = kmeans( Xsample, pass1centres, **kwargs )[0]
    return kmeans( X, samplecentres, **kwargs )

def cdist_sparse( X, Y, **kwargs ):
    """ -> |X| x |Y| cdist array, any cdist metric
        X or Y may be sparse -- best csr
    """
        # todense row at a time, v slow if both v sparse
    sxy = 2*issparse(X) + issparse(Y)
    if sxy == 0:
        return cdist( X, Y, **kwargs )
    d = np.empty( (X.shape[0], Y.shape[0]), np.float64 )
    if sxy == 2:
        for j, x in enumerate(X):
            d[j] = cdist( x.todense(), Y, **kwargs ) [0]
    elif sxy == 1:
        for k, y in enumerate(Y):
            d[:,k] = cdist( X, y.todense(), **kwargs ) [0]
    else:
        for j, x in enumerate(X):
            for k, y in enumerate(Y):
                d[j,k] = cdist( x.todense(), y.todense(), **kwargs ) [0]
    return d

def randomsample( X, n ):
    """ random.sample of the rows of X
        X may be sparse -- best csr
    """
    sampleix = random.sample( xrange( X.shape[0] ), int(n) )
    return X[sampleix]

def nearestcentres( X, centres, metric="euclidean", p=2 ):
    """ each X -> nearest centre, any metric
            euclidean2 (~ withinss) is more sensitive to outliers,
            cityblock (manhattan, L1) less sensitive
    """
    D = cdist( X, centres, metric=metric, p=p )  # |X| x |centres|
    return D.argmin(axis=1)

def Lqmetric( x, y=None, q=.5 ):
    # yes a metric, may increase weight of near matches; see ...
    return (np.abs(x - y) ** q) .mean() if y is not None \
        else (np.abs(x) ** q) .mean()

#...............................................................................
class Kmeans:
    """ km = Kmeans( X, k= or centres=, ... )
        in: either initial centres= for kmeans
            or k= [nsample=] for kmeanssample
        out: km.centres, km.Xtocentre, km.distances
        iterator:
            for jcentre, J in km:
                clustercentre = centres[jcentre]
                J indexes e.g. X[J], classes[J]
    """
    def __init__( self, X, k=0, centres=None, nsample=0, **kwargs ):
        self.X = X
        if centres is None:
            self.centres, self.Xtocentre, self.distances = kmeanssample(
                X, k=k, nsample=nsample, **kwargs )
        else:
            self.centres, self.Xtocentre, self.distances = kmeans(
                X, centres, **kwargs )

    def __iter__(self):
        for jc in range(len(self.centres)):
            yield jc, (self.Xtocentre == jc)

#...............................................................................
if __name__ == "__main__":
    import random
    import sys
    from time import time

    N = 10000
    dim = 10
    ncluster = 10
    kmsample = 100  # 0: random centres, > 0: kmeanssample
    kmdelta = .001
    kmiter = 10
    metric = "cityblock"  # "chebyshev" = max, "cityblock" L1,  Lqmetric
    seed = 1

    exec( "\n".join( sys.argv[1:] ))  # run this.py N= ...
    np.set_printoptions( 1, threshold=200, edgeitems=5, suppress=True )
    np.random.seed(seed)
    random.seed(seed)

    print "N %d  dim %d  ncluster %d  kmsample %d  metric %s" % (
        N, dim, ncluster, kmsample, metric)
    X = np.random.exponential( size=(N,dim) )
        # cf scikits-learn datasets/
    t0 = time()
    if kmsample > 0:
        centres, xtoc, dist = kmeanssample( X, ncluster, nsample=kmsample,
            delta=kmdelta, maxiter=kmiter, metric=metric, verbose=2 )
    else:
        randomcentres = randomsample( X, ncluster )
        centres, xtoc, dist = kmeans( X, randomcentres,
            delta=kmdelta, maxiter=kmiter, metric=metric, verbose=2 )
    print "%.0f msec" % ((time() - t0) * 1000)

    # also ~/py/np/kmeans/test-kmeans.py

Some notes added 26mar 2012:

1) for cosine distance, first normalize all the data vectors to |X| = 1; then

cosinedistance( X, Y ) = 1 - X . Y = Euclidean distance |X - Y|^2 / 2

is fast. For bit vectors, keep the norms separately from the vectors instead of expanding out to floats (although some programs may expand for you). For sparse vectors, say 1 % of N, X . Y should take time O( 2 % N ), space O(N); but I don't know which programs do that.

2) Scikit-learn clustering gives an excellent overview of k-means, mini-batch-k-means ... with code that works on scipy.sparse matrices.

3) Always check cluster sizes after k-means. If you're expecting roughly equal-sized clusters, but they come out [44 37 9 5 5] % ... (sound of head-scratching).

Best Answer

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