Concepts in conceptual clustering

Abstract

Although it has a relatively short history, conceptual clustering is an especially active area of research in machine learning. There are a variety of ways in which conceptual patterns (the AI contribution to clustering) play a role in the clustering process. Two distinct conceptual clustering paradigms (conceptual sorting of exemplars and concept discovery) are described briefly. Then six types of conceptual clustering algorithms are characterized, attempting to cover the present spectrum of mechanisms used to conceptualize the clustering process.