Advanced Review

Rough clustering
Pawan Lingras1∗ and Georg Peters2

Traditional clustering partitions a group of objects into a number of nonoverlap-

ping sets based on a similarity measure. In real world, the boundaries of these
sets or clusters may not be clearly defined. Some of the objects may be almost
equidistant from the center of multiple clusters. Traditional set theory mandates
that these objects be assigned to a single cluster. Rough set theory can be used
to represent the overlapping clusters. Rough sets provide more flexible represen-
tation than conventional sets, at the same time they are less descriptive than the
fuzzy sets. This paper describes the basic concept of rough clustering based on
k-means, genetic algorithms, Kohonen self-organizing maps, and support vec-
tor clustering. The discussion also includes a review of rough cluster validity
measures, and applications of rough clustering to such diverse areas as forestry,
medicine, medical imaging, web mining, super markets, and traffic engineering.

C 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. WIREs Data Mining Knowl Discov 2011 1 64–72 DOI: 10.1002/widm.16

INTRODUCTION different rough clustering techniques, rough cluster-

A large number of objects can be grouped into a
smaller number of clusters to simplify modeling
and decision-making process. A decision maker can
then develop guidelines and models for a group in-
stead of individual objects. The conventional cluster-
ing techniques mandate that an object must belong to
precisely one cluster. Such a requirement is found to
be too restrictive in many data mining applications.1
In practice, an object may display characteristics of
different clusters. In such cases, an object should be-
long to more than one cluster and as a result, clus-
ter boundaries necessarily overlap. Fuzzy set repre-
sentation of clusters, using algorithms such as fuzzy
c-means (FCM),2,3 make it possible for an object to
belong to multiple clusters with a degree of mem-
bership between 0 and 1. In some cases, the fuzzy
degree of membership may be too descriptive for in-
terpreting clustering results. Rough set-based cluster-
ing provides a solution that is less restrictive than
conventional clustering and less descriptive (specific)
than fuzzy clustering. Rough set theory has made
substantial progress as a classification tool in data
mining.4 The basic concept of representing a set as
lower and upper approximations can be used in a
broader context such as clustering. Clustering in re-
lation to rough set theory is attracting increasing
interest among researchers.5–20 This paper describes
∗
Correspondence to: pawan.lingras@gmail.com
1
Saint Mary’s University, Nova Scotia, Canada
2
Munich University of Applied Sciences, Munich, Germany
DOI: 10.1002/widm.16
ing validation measures, and their applications.
ROUGH SETS
The notion of rough set was proposed by Pawlak.4
This section provides a brief summary of the concepts
from rough set.
Let U denote the universe (a finite ordinary set),
and let R ⊆ U × U be an equivalence relation on U.
The pair A = (U,R) is called an approximation space.
The equivalence relation R partitions the set U into
disjoint subsets. Such a partition of the universe is
denoted by U/R = (E1 , E2 , . . . , En ) , where Ei is an
equivalence class of R. If two elements u, v ∈ U belong
to the same equivalence class Ei ⊆ U/R, we say that
u and v are indistinguishable. The equivalence classes
of R are called the elementary or atomic sets in the
approximation space A = (U,R). The union of one or
more elementary sets is called a composed set in A.
The empty set is also considered a special composed
set. Com(A) denotes the family of all composed sets.
As it is not possible to differentiate the elements
within the same equivalence class, one may not be able
to obtain a precise representation for an arbitrary set
X ⊆ U in terms of elementary sets in A.
Instead, its lower and upper approximations
may represent the set X. The lower approximation
A(X) is the union of all the elementary sets, which
are subsets of X. The upper approximation Ā(X)
is the union of all the elementary sets that have a
nonempty intersection with X. The pair [A(X), Ā(X)]
is the representation of an ordinary set of X in the

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 WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
Upper approximation
Lower approximation
(Positive region)
Negative region
F I G U R E 1 | Rough set approximations.
approximation space A = (U,R), or simply the rough
set of X. The elements in the lower approximation
of X definitely belong to X, whereas elements in the
upper approximation of X may or may not belong
to X.
Figure 1 illustrates the lower and upper approx-
imations. The lower approximation A(X) is a sub-
set of its corresponding upper approximation Ā(X).
The region of the upper approximation  that is not
 joys the exclusive service for rich clients (see Figure 2).
covered by the lower approximation Ā(X) − (X) is
called the boundary region. The lower approxima-
tion is also called positive region because its elements
definitely belong to X. In contrast to that, the region
not covered by the upper approximation is denoted
as negative region to indicate that its elements surely
do not belong to X.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BOOLEAN,
FUZZY, AND ROUGH SETS
Rough sets are often compared with fuzzy sets. There
is a significant amount of literature that discusses the
relationship between rough and fuzzy sets, which can
often complement each other.21 Many hybridization
models have been proposed that combine the com-
plementary features of rough and fuzzy sets. In par-
ticular, Mitra et al.,15 and Maji and Pal12,13 have
shown the usefulness of a hybrid rough and fuzzy set
clustering.
In this section, we will use a simple example
to demonstrate a correspondence between Boolean,
fuzzy, and rough sets (note that we refer to sets as
Boolean sets to indicate their dichotomist character,
limiting the membership grades to true or false).
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Rough clustering
Fuzzy membership λ
Boolean separator
Poor Rich
λrich
λpoor
1
Rough approximations
Surely Poor or Surely
poor rich clients rich
clients (Unclear status) clients
F I G U R E 2 | Boolean, fuzzy, and rough sets.
A bank plans to categorize its customers into
two groups, rich and poor customers. When apply-
ing Boolean clustering, the bank needs to define an
amount of money that separates rich from poor cus-
tomers, e.g., rich customers are defined by a fortune of
USD 1 million or more. Therefore, a customer own-
ing USD 999,999 would be treated as poor customer,
whereas a customer that owns only USD 1 more en-
So, in Boolean clustering, an object belongs to only
one cluster.
Obviously, a refined categorization would make
more sense which would incorporate neighborhood
relations. Fuzzy sets provide such methods by the
concept of linguistic variables.22 The variables rich
and poor are described by membership functions
(Figure 2) which define the closeness to the variables.
A customer possessing no money at all would be con-
sidered as absolutely poor (λpoor = 1) and by no means
rich (λrich = 0). However, our customer owning USD
999,999 would be just in between poor and rich, in-
dicated by membership degrees, e.g., λpoor = 0.50001
and λrich = 0.49999. So, in fuzzy sets, an object gen-
erally belongs to more than one set.
A possible interpretation of rough clustering is
as follows. In contrast to fuzzy clustering in rough
sets, an object belongs, like in Boolean clustering, to
only one cluster. However, in contrast to Boolean
clustering, the definite membership of some objects
cannot be determined. To indicate their unclear sta-
tus, they are grouped only in the upper approxima-
tions (or the boundary regions) of the sets they may
possibly be a member of.
Consider a variation of the example discussed
above. Although customers with assets of less than
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Advanced Review
USD 500,000 are treated as poor (lower approxima-
tion of the set poor) and clients owning more than
USD 1 million are served as rich (lower approxima-
tion of the set rich), the group in between these needs
to provide more evidence to be eventually assigned to
one category of clients. Their unclear membership is
shown by their assignments to the boundary region
between the both sets.
The α-cut or defuzzification of fuzzy set the-
ory may seem like similar instruments at the first
sight. However, these concepts differ significantly.
Fuzzy sets are based on neighborhood relations,
whereas rough sets relate to missing or contradicting
information.
Note that this is a simplistic comparison of
Boolean concepts and rough as well as fuzzy sets.
For a more sophisticated interaction between the two
set theories, the users are encouraged to study the
references cited at the beginning of this section.
ADOPTION OF ROUGH SET THEORY
TO CLUSTERING
Rough sets were proposed using equivalence rela-
tions. However, it is possible to define a pair  of
upper and lower approximations A(X), Ā(X) or a
rough set for every set X ⊆ U as long as the proper-
ties specified by Pawlak4 are satisfied. Yao and Lin,23
and Yao24 described various generalizations of rough
sets by relaxing the assumptions of an underlying
equivalence relation. Polkowski and Skowron,25 and
Skowron and Stepaniuk26 discussed a similar gener-
alization of rough set theory.
Lingras and West11 provided an efficient alter-
native based on an extension of the k-means algo-
rithm. k-means clustering is one of the most popu-
lar clustering techniques.27 Incorporating rough sets
into k-means clustering requires the addition of the
concept of lower and upper approximations. The in-
corporation required redefinition of the calculation of
the centroids to include the effects of lower and upper
approximations. The next step was to design criteria
to determine whether an object belongs to the lower
or upper approximations of a cluster.
The rough k-means approach has been a subject
of further research. Peters16 discussed various refine-
ments of Lingras and West’s original proposal. These
included calculation of rough centroids and the use of
ratios of distances as opposed to differences between
distances similar to those used in the rough set-based
Kohonen algorithm described in Ref 10. The rough
k-means and its various extensions have been found
to be effective in distance-based clustering.
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Let us consider a hypothetical classification
scheme U/P = {X1 , X1 , . . . , Xk}, which partitions the
set U based on certain criteria. The actual values of
Xi are not known. The classification of supermarket
customers is an example of such a hypothetical clas-
sification scheme. Depending on the predominant us-
age, a set of supermarket customers can be classified
as loyal high spenders, loyal moderate spenders, semi-
loyal high spenders, semi-loyal moderate spenders, or
low spenders. However, the actual sets correspond-
ing to each one of these classes are not known. Let
us assume that due to insufficient knowledge it is not
possible to precisely describe the sets Xi , 1 ≤ i ≤ k, in
the partition. However, it is possible to define each
set Xi∈ U/P using its lower and upper approxima-
tions A(Xi ), Ā(Xi ) based on the available informa-
tion. The available information for supermarket cus-
tomers may consist of their transaction records. We
will use vector representations, v for an object and
xi for cluster Xi . We are considering the upper and
lower approximations of only a few subsets of U.
Therefore, it is not possible to verify all the prop-
erties of rough sets.8 However, the family of upper
and lower approximations of xi ∈ U/R are required
to follow some of the basic rough set properties such
as:
P1. An object v can be part of at most one lower
approximation.
P2. v ∈ A(xi ) ⇒ v ∈ Ā(xi )
P3. v is not part of any lower bound ⇔
v belongs to two or more upper bounds.
The next step in rough clustering is to determine
whether an object belongs to the upper or lower ap-
proximations of a cluster. For each object vector, v, let
d(v,xi ) be the distance between itself and the weight
vector xi of cluster Xi . The form of the distance func-
tion depends on the application. The Euclidean dis-
tance function or inverse of a similarity function are
two of the possible choices. The ratios d(v,xi )/d(v,xj ),
are used to determine the assignment of v as follows:
A1. If d(v,xi ) is the minimum for 1 ≤ i ≤ k
and d(v,xi )/d(v,xj ) ≥ threshold for any pair
(i, j)then v ∈ Ā(xi ) and v ∈ Ā(x j ). Further-
more, v is not part of any lower approxima-
tion. This criterion guarantees that property
(P3) is satisfied.
A2. Otherwise, v ∈ A(xi ) such that d(v,xi ) is the
minimum for 1 ≤ i ≤ k. In addition, by prop-
erty (P2), v ∈ Ā(xi ). This criterion also satis-
fies property (P1).
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Possibly the most popular clustering techniques
is the k-means algorithm.27,28 The name k-means
comes from the means of the k clusters that are cre-
ated from the set of objects using the method. The
process begins by randomly choosing k objects as the
centroids of the k clusters. The objects are assigned to
one of the k clusters based on minimum value of dis-
tance between the object vector v and cluster vector
xi . After the assignment of all the objects to various
clusters, the new centroid vectors of the clusters are
calculated as:
v∈xi v
Xi = (1)
|xi |
where |xi | is the cardinality or size of cluster xi . If the
size of cluster xi is 0, then xi is a null vector.
The objects in rough k-means clustering are as-
signed to either lower or upper approximations using
the criteria (A1) or (A2). Therefore, we need to mod-
ify the Eq. (1) for rough k-means as:
If |A(xi )|
= 0 and |A(xi )|
= 0, then In k-means clustering algorithms, cluster centers
 
v∈A(xi ) v v∈ Ā(xi )−A(xi ) v
xi = wl × + wu ×
|A(xi )| | Ā(xi ) − A(xi )|
else if |A(xi )|
= 0 and | Ā(xi ) − A(xi )| = 0, then
 real objects. In switching regression models, the clus-
v∈A(xi ) v
xi =
|A(xi )|
else if |A(xi )| = 0 and | Ā(xi ) − A(xi )|
= 0, then regression model, which—together with the rough k-

v∈ Ā(xi )−A(xi ) v
xi = . (2)
| Ā(xi ) − A(xi )|
Here, wl + wu = 1. Usually, wl > w u . Rough k-
means is a popular and efficient algorithm for rough
clustering. Before looking at other rough clustering al-
gorithms, we will look at the evaluation of the quality
of rough clustering.
ROUGH CLUSTER VALIDITY
MEASURES
Quality of clustering is an important issue in appli-
cation of clustering techniques to real world data. A
good measure of cluster quality will help in decid-
ing various parameters used in clustering algorithms.
One of the simplest measures of quality of a con-
ventional clustering scheme is to compute the sum
of compactness of the generated clusters. We can de-
fine compactness of a cluster as the sum of distance
of all the objects in that cluster from the centroid of
the cluster. Lingras et al.9 have defined a more elab-
orate cluster validity index based on decision theory.
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Rough clustering
The rough Davies–Bouldin index proposed by Mitra
et al.15 takes into account the compactness within a
cluster as well as separation among clusters. A modi-
fied version is defined as follows19 :
⎛
1  1
Si = ⎝ × ||v − xi ||2 +
|A(xi )| || Ā(xi ) − A(xi )||
v∈A(x )
i
⎞1/q
  q
||v − xi ||2 ⎠
× . (3)
bv
v∈ Ā(xi )−A(xi )
Here bv is the number of boundary regions object v
belongs to.
RELATED APPROACHES TO ROUGH
CLUSTERING
A Class of Rough Partitive Algorithms
are represented by artificial objects that correspond
to the means of the clusters. In contrast to that,
Kaufman and Rousseeuw29 proposed k-medoid clus-
tering where the cluster centers are represented by
ters are represented by functions instead of objects.30
Perers and Lampart17 suggested rough k-
medoids and Peters18 proposed a rough switching
means—form a class of rough partitive algorithms.
Genetic Algorithm Based Rough Clustering
The origin of genetic algorithms (GA) is attributed to
Holland’s31 work on cellular automata. There has
been significant interest in GA over the last two
decades. A GA is a search process that follows the
principles of evolution through natural selection. The
domain knowledge is represented using a candidate
solution called an organism. Typically, an organism
is a single genome represented as a vector.
An abstract view of a generational GA is as
follows: A group of organisms is called a popula-
tion. Successive populations are called generations. A
generational GA starts from initial generation G(0),
and for each generation G(t) generates a new genera-
tion G(t+1) using genetic operators such as mutation
and crossover. The mutation operator creates new
genomes by changing values of one or more genes
at random. The crossover operator joins segments of
two or more genomes to generate a new genome.
There are three versions of the GA based rough
clustering, first one proposed in 2001 by Lingras,8
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another one in 2004 by Mitra,14 and an evolutionary
k-medoid in 2008 by Peters et al.32
We will discuss the evolutionary rough k-
medoid by Peters et al. in greater detail as it is prob-
ably the most efficient GA based rough clustering.
A GA can be used to search for the most appropri-
ate k-medoid. The genome will contain k-genes, each
corresponding to a medoid. Such a genome will be
smaller than the one used by Lingras8 and Mitra.14
The smaller genomes will reduce the space require-
ments and also facilitate faster convergence. The val-
ues of genes for the medoids are discrete and limited to
the number of objects in the dataset. If we number the
objects from 1 to n, then each gene can take an integer
value in the range 1–n. This restriction on the values
of genes also reduces the search space allowing for
faster convergence. The rough k-medoid algorithm
can use assignments (A1) and (A2) to determine the
membership degrees of objects to lower and upper ap-
proximations of different clusters. A cluster validity
measure such as rough Davis–Bouldin index is opti-
mized to arrive at an appropriate clustering scheme.
The main advantage of the evolutionary rough clus-
tering is the flexibility of the optimization criteria.
Kohonen Network Based Rough Clustering
The unsupervised learning based on the Kohonen
rule33 uses competitive learning approach. In com-
petitive learning, the output neurons compete with
each other. The winner output neuron has the output
of 1, the rest of the output neurons have outputs of
0. The competitive learning is suitable for classifying
a given pattern into exactly one of the mutually ex-
clusive clusters. A Kohonen network consists of two
layers. The first layer is the input layer and the sec-
ond layer is called the Kohonen layer. The network
receives the input vector for a given pattern. If the
pattern belongs to the ith cluster, then ith neuron in
the Kohonen layer has an output value of 1 and other
Kohonen layer neurons have output values of 0. The
training set of input vectors is presented to the net-
work several times. For each iteration, an object v
contributes to the weight vector xi of a cluster.
Incorporating rough sets into the Kohonen al-
gorithm requires an addition of the concept of lower
and upper approximations in the equations, which
are used for updating the weights of the winners.10 A
neuron in the Kohonen layer consists of two parts,
a lower neuron and an upper neuron. The lower
neuron has an output of 1, if an object belongs to
the lower approximation of the cluster. Similarly, a
membership in the upper approximation of the clus-
ter will result in an output of 1 from the upper neu-
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ron. Because an object belonging to the lower ap-
proximation of a cluster also belongs to its upper
approximation, when lower neuron has an output
of 1, the upper neuron also has an output of 1.
However, membership in the upper approximation
of a cluster does not necessarily imply the member-
ship in its lower approximation. Therefore, the up-
per neuron contains the lower neuron. Assignments
(A1) and (A2) are used to determine the output from
the lower and upper neurons. For assignment (A1),
the weight vectors xi and xj are modified as xinew =
xiold + au (v − xiold ) and xnew
j = xold
j + au (v − x j ). For
old
assignment (A2), the weight vector xi is modified as
xinew = xiold + al (v − xiold ). Usually, al > au .
Support Vector Based Rough Clustering
The rough clustering methods as described above are
based on Euclidean distances in the original input data
space. Support vector clustering (SVC)34 is a kernel
based clustering method that is capable of identifying
clusters having arbitrary shapes. Here, the clustering
problem is formulated as a quadratic programming
(QP) problem to learn a minimum radius sphere en-
closing the image of the dataset to be clustered in a
high-dimensional feature space. In SVC, this problem
is solved by employing a method, called kernel trick34
that helps solve the QP problem without explicit map-
ping of data points from the input data space to the
higher dimensional feature space. Once the QP prob-
lem is solved, SVC uses a graph-based cluster labeling
method to identify the arbitrary shaped clusters exist-
ing in the input data space. Rough SVC (RSVC)35
is a soft clustering method derived from the SVC
paradigm. It achieves soft data clustering by a nat-
ural fusion of rough set theory and SVC. In RSVC,
the QP problem involved in SVC is modified to impart
a rough set theoretic flavor. The modified QP prob-
lem obtained for RSVC turns out to be the same as the
one involved in SVC. Therefore, the existing solution
strategies used for solving the SVC–QP problem can
be used for solving the RSVC–QP problem as well.
The cluster labeling method of RSVC is a modified
version of the one used in SVC.
Dynamic Rough Clustering
In many real-life situations where cluster algorithms
are applied, the underlying data structure is not stable
but changes over the time. For example, the shopping
patterns of customers change dramatically within a
calendar year. In autumn, they buy warm clothes to
prepare for the winter and in spring they look for
t-shirts instead of gloves. To address changes in the
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data structures, Peters and Weber19 proposed a dy-
namic approach to rough clustering where the initial
parameters of the algorithm are updated in cycles to
better adapt to changing environments like the sea-
sonal changes in customer behavior.
Further Approaches
Besides the approaches discussed above, several fur-
ther approaches to rough clustering have been pro-
posed. They include early approaches to clustering
based on the set interpretation of rough sets by do
Prado et al.36 and Voges et al.37,38 Recently Yao
et al.39 suggested to relax some of the properties of
rough clustering, in particular the need for the mem-
bership, to at least two cluster of objects in bound-
ary areas, and introduced an interval-based clustering
approach.
APPLICATIONS OF ROUGH
CLUSTERING
Rough clustering has been used successfully in
forestry,32 medicine,5,32 imaging,14 web mining,10
supermarkets,40 and traffic engineering applications.8
This section briefly describes three such experiments.
Clustering Highways
Seasonal and permanent traffic counters (PTCs) scat-
tered across a highway network are the major sources
of traffic data. These traffic counters measure the traf-
fic volume—the number of vehicles that have passed
through a particular section of a lane or highway in
a given time period. Traffic volumes can be expressed
in terms of hourly or daily traffic.
The PTC sites are grouped to form various
road classes. These classes are used to develop guide-
lines for the construction, maintenance, and upgrad-
ing of highway sections. In one commonly used sys-
tem, roads are classified on the basis of trip purpose
and trip length characteristics.8 Examples of resulting
classes were commuter, business, long distance, and
recreational highways.
The study described in Ref 8 was based on a
sample of 264 monthly traffic patterns—variation of
monthly average daily traffic volume in a given year—
recorded between 1987 and 1991 on Alberta high-
ways. Rough clustering was used to create three lower
and upper approximations of three clusters:
1. commuter respective business
2. long-distance, and
3. recreational.
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Rough clustering
The average pattern for the lower approxi-
mation of commuter/business cluster had the least
variation over the year. The recreational cluster,
conversely, had the most variation. The variation
for long-distance cluster was less than the recre-
ational but more than the commuter/business cluster.
Lingras8 illustrated how one of the highway sections
near counter number C013201 may have been com-
muter/business or long distance in 1985. The monthly
pattern for the highway section fell in between the two
clusters. The counter C013201 is located on Highway
13, 20 km west of Alberta–Saskatchewan border. It is
an alternate route for travel from the city of Saskatoon
and surrounding townships to townships surrounding
the city of Edmonton. Rough set representation of
clusters made it possible to identify such intermediate
patterns.
Clustering Web Users
The study data was obtained from the web access
logs of the first three courses in Computing Science at
Saint Mary’s University over a 16-week period.11 Stu-
dents’ attitudes towards the course vary a great deal.
It was hoped that the profile of visits would reflect
some of the distinctions between the students. The
web logs were preprocessed to create an appropriate
representation of each user corresponding to a visit.
The following attributes were used for representing
each visitor:
1. On campus/off campus access.
2. Daytime/nighttime access.
3. Access during lab/class days or non-lab/class
days.
4. Number of hits.
5. Number of class notes downloaded.
It was assumed that the visitors could fall into
three categories:
1. Studious: These visitors download the cur-
rent set of notes. Because they download a
limited/current set of notes, they probably
study class notes on a regular basis.
2. Crammers: These visitors download a large
set of notes. This indicates that they have
stayed away from the class notes for a long
period of time. They are planning for pretest
cramming.
3. Workers: These visitors are mostly working
on class or lab assignments or accessing the
discussion board.
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Advanced Review
T A B L E 1 Cardinalities of Clusters Using Crisp, Fuzzy, and Rough Clustering
Course Cluster FCM > 0.6
First Studious 1382
Crammers 414
Workers 4354
Second Studious 1750
Crammers 397
Workers 1322
Third Studious 265
Crammers 84
Workers 717
The web users were clustered using con-
ventional Boolean clustering, FCM, and rough k-
means to compare these three clustering philosophies.
Table 1 shows the cardinalities of conventional clus-
ters, the rough clusters, and fuzzy clusters with mem-
berships greater than 0.6. The actual numbers in
each cluster vary based on the characteristics of each
course. For example, in the fuzzy clusters, the first-
term course had significantly more workers than stu-
dious visitors, whereas the second-term course had
more studious visitors than workers. The increase in
the percentage of studious visitors in the second term
seems to be a natural progression. It should be noted
that the progression from workers to studious visi-
tors was more obvious with fuzzy clusters than the
conventional clusters and the rough clusters. Interest-
ingly, the second year course had significantly large
number of workers than studious visitors. This seems
to be counterintuitive. However, it can be explained
based on the structure of the websites. Unlike the two
first year courses, the second year course did not post
the class notes on the web. The notes downloaded
by these students were usually sample programs that
were essential during their laboratory work.
Clustering Supermarket Customers
The data consisted of transactional records over a
26-week period from one supermarket store.40 Sorted
patterns of weekly visits and spending were used to
represent the customers. The average spending and
visit patterns enabled Lingras et al.40 to distinguish
between the five types of customers as: loyal big
spenders (G1), loyal moderate spenders (G2), semi-
loyal potentially big spenders (G3), potentially mod-
erate to big spenders with limited loyalty (G4), and
infrequent customers (G5). Even though for most
weeks, G2 had higher spending than G3, the high-
est spending of G3 was higher than G2. The region
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Lower Bound Conventional Cluster
1412 1814
288 406
5350 5399
1197 1699
443 634
1677 3697
223 318
69 89
906 867
had only one store and hence it is likely that G3 did
not find it convenient to shop at the supermarket on
a regular basis.
Although the lower approximations tended to
provide distinguishing characteristics of various clus-
ters, the boundary regions of the clusters tended to
fall between the lower approximations of two re-
gions. There was a large difference between the lower
approximations of the G1 and G4. However, their
boundary regions seemed to be less distinct. The
boundary regions of G1 and G4 fell between the lower
approximations of those groups.
CONCLUSION
In practical applications, an object may exhibit char-
acteristics of multiple clusters. The conventional
Boolean clustering forces these objects into one of
the clusters. This can lead to potentially erroneous
assignments, leading to incorrect decisions. The fuzzy
and rough clustering algorithms allow an object to
belong to more than one cluster. The resulting clus-
tering scheme may consist of overlapping clusters.
Although the rough clustering removes the restric-
tion of the unique cluster assignment, it is less de-
scriptive than the fuzzy clustering. In some cases, a
decision maker may find a concise description from
rough clustering less overwhelming. This paper de-
scribed the adoption of rough set theory to clustering,
including a rough extension of the popular clustering
algorithm called k-means. Rough clustering based on
other techniques such as genetic algorithms, Kohonen
networks, and SVC were also described. The rough
clustering has been used in a variety of applications
including forestry, medicine, image processing, web
mining, supermarkets, and traffic analysis. The paper
described three such applications to highlight various
aspects of rough clustering, including a comparison
with Boolean and fuzzy clustering.
Volume 1, January/February 2011
 WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
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FURTHER READING
De SK. A rough set theoretic approach to clustering. Fundam Informaticae 2004, 62:409–417.
Falcón R, Jeon G, Bello R, Jeong J. Rough clustering with partial supervision. Stud Comput Intell 2009, 174:137–161.
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Proceedings MICAI’08, LNCS 5317 2008, 585–593.
Kumar P, Krishna PR, Bapi RS, De SK. Rough clustering of sequential data. Data Knowledge Eng 2007, 63:183–199.
Maji P, Pal SK. Rough set based generalized fuzzy c-means algorithm and quantitative indices. IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern
B 2007, 37:1529–1540.
Mitra S, Barman B. Rough-fuzzy clustering: an application to medical imagery. Proceedings RSTK’08, LNCS 5009 2008,
300–307.
Parmar D, Wu T, Blackhurst J, MMR. An algorithm for clustering categorical data using rough set theory. Data Knowledge
Eng 2007, 63:877–891.
Varma CMBS, Asharaf S, Murty MN. Rough core vector clustering. Proceedings PReMI’07, LNCS 4815 2007, 304–310.
Wang R, Miao D, Li G, Zhang H. Rough overlapping biclustering of gene expression data. Proceedings of the 7th IEEE
International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering (BIBE) 2007, 828–834.
Wang SC, Miao DQ, Chen M, Wang RZ. Overlapping-based rough clustering algorithm. J Electron Inform Technol 2008,
30:1713–1716.
Xiao D, Hu S. Ellipsoidal basis functional neural network based on rough k-means. J Nanjing Univ Aeronaut Astronaut
2006, 38:321–325.
Zhou T, Zhang Y, Lu H, Deng F, Wang F. Rough cluster algorithm based on kernel function. LNAI 5009 2008, 172–179.
Zhou T, Zhang YM, Yuan HEJ, Lu HL. Rough k-means cluster with adaptive parameters. Proceedings of 6th. International
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c 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Volume 1, January/February 2011