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Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 798

Nishchal K. Verma · A. K. Ghosh


Editors

Computational
Intelligence: Theories,
Applications and
Future Directions—
Volume I
ICCI-2017
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

Volume 798

Series editor
Janusz Kacprzyk, Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: kacprzyk@ibspan.waw.pl
The series “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing” contains publications on theory,
applications, and design methods of Intelligent Systems and Intelligent Computing. Virtually all
disciplines such as engineering, natural sciences, computer and information science, ICT, economics,
business, e-commerce, environment, healthcare, life science are covered. The list of topics spans all the
areas of modern intelligent systems and computing such as: computational intelligence, soft computing
including neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computing and the fusion of these paradigms,
social intelligence, ambient intelligence, computational neuroscience, artificial life, virtual worlds and
society, cognitive science and systems, Perception and Vision, DNA and immune based systems,
self-organizing and adaptive systems, e-Learning and teaching, human-centered and human-centric
computing, recommender systems, intelligent control, robotics and mechatronics including
human-machine teaming, knowledge-based paradigms, learning paradigms, machine ethics, intelligent
data analysis, knowledge management, intelligent agents, intelligent decision making and support,
intelligent network security, trust management, interactive entertainment, Web intelligence and multimedia.
The publications within “Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing” are primarily proceedings
of important conferences, symposia and congresses. They cover significant recent developments in the
field, both of a foundational and applicable character. An important characteristic feature of the series is
the short publication time and world-wide distribution. This permits a rapid and broad dissemination of
research results.
Advisory Board
Chairman
Nikhil R. Pal, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India
e-mail: nikhil@isical.ac.in
Members
Rafael Bello Perez, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Computing, Universidad Central “Marta
Abreu” de Las Villas, Santa Clara, Cuba
e-mail: rbellop@uclv.edu.cu
Emilio S. Corchado, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
e-mail: escorchado@usal.es
Hani Hagras, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester,
UK
e-mail: hani@essex.ac.uk
László T. Kóczy, Department of Automation, Széchenyi István University, Győr, Hungary
e-mail: koczy@sze.hu
Vladik Kreinovich, Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA
e-mail: vladik@utep.edu
Chin-Teng Lin, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan
e-mail: ctlin@mail.nctu.edu.tw
Jie Lu, Faculty of Engineering and Information, University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia
e-mail: Jie.Lu@uts.edu.au
Patricia Melin, Graduate Program of Computer Science, Tijuana Institute of Technology, Tijuana,
Mexico
e-mail: epmelin@hafsamx.org
Nadia Nedjah, Department of Electronics Engineering, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil
e-mail: nadia@eng.uerj.br
Ngoc Thanh Nguyen, Wrocław University of Technology, Wrocław, Poland
e-mail: Ngoc-Thanh.Nguyen@pwr.edu.pl
Jun Wang, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong
Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
e-mail: jwang@mae.cuhk.edu.hk

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11156


Nishchal K. Verma A. K. Ghosh

Editors

Computational Intelligence:
Theories, Applications
and Future Directions—
Volume I
ICCI-2017

123
Editors
Nishchal K. Verma A. K. Ghosh
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Aerospace Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh
India India

ISSN 2194-5357 ISSN 2194-5365 (electronic)


Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing
ISBN 978-981-13-1131-4 ISBN 978-981-13-1132-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1132-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018945092

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019


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Preface

Computational intelligence (CI) focuses on biologically and linguistically inspired


computing tools and techniques. CI technologies have been playing and will con-
tinue to play important roles in a wide variety of application areas. Although there
have been many success stories including techniques like deep learning, a lot more
is left to be done, particularly if one wants computing tools to really mimic the brain
either at a lower (neuronal) level or at a higher level. The scientific exchanges in
various collocated events are expected to play important roles in advancing CI
theories, applications and future directions.
The modern world systems and processes are growing exponentially in size with
complexity, thereby their monitoring and control is a challenging task. CI provides
a set of tools, namely, but not limited to, neural networks, evolutionary algorithms,
fuzzy systems and hybrid intelligent systems that can understand the principles
which make intelligent behaviour possible in these systems. Through this volume,
researchers, scientists, academicians, scholars and practitioners in this area will get
an exposure to recent innovations and initiatives using CI-based approaches for
addressing the complex real-world problems. The deliberations should stimulate
new thoughts and ideas and pave the way for fruitful collaborations, explorations
and interdisciplinary applications in CI.

Kanpur, India Nishchal K. Verma


A. K. Ghosh

v
Contents

Part I Big Data Analytics


Analysis of Weather Data Using Forecasting Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
S. Poornima, M. Pushpalatha and J. Sujit Shankar
K-Data Depth Based Clustering Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Ishwar Baidari and Channamma Patil
Approximation and Updation of Betweenness Centrality
in Dynamic Complex Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Prity Kumari and Anurag Singh

Part II Bioinformatics
High-Dimensional Data Classification Using PSO
and Bat Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Viplove Divyasheesh and Anil Pandey
Feature Learning Using Stacked Autoencoder for Shared
and Multimodal Fusion of Medical Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Vikas Singh, Nishchal K. Verma, Zeeshan Ul Islam and Yan Cui
A New Computational Approach to Identify Essential Genes
in Bacterial Organisms Using Machine Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Ankur Singhal, Devasheesh Roy, Somit Mittal, Joydip Dhar
and Anuraj Singh
Automatic ECG Signals Recognition Based on Time Domain
Features Extraction Using Fiducial Mean Square Algorithm . . . . . . . . . 81
V. Vijendra and Meghana Kulkarni

vii
viii Contents

Part III Computational Intelligence for e-Health


Segmentation and Border Detection of Melanoma Lesions
Using Convolutional Neural Network and SVM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Ashwin R. Jadhav, Arun G. Ghontale and Vimal K. Shrivastava
Image Processing Methods for Automated Assessment
of Sperm DNA Integrity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
B. Banu Rekha, S. Vidyalakshmi, S. Sree Niranjanaa Bose
and T. T. Anusha Devi
Smartphone-Based Ubiquitous Data Sensing and Analysis for
Personalized Preventive Care: A Conceptual Framework . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Saurabh Singh Thakur and Ram Babu Roy
Dimensionality Reduction-Based Breast Cancer Classification
Using Machine Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Kuhu Gupta and Rekh Ram Janghel

Part IV Computational Simulation


A New Heuristic for Degree-Constrained Minimum Spanning
Tree Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Kavita Singh and Shyam Sundar
Event-Triggered Control for Trajectory Tracking by Robotic
Manipulator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Ankur Kamboj, Narendra Kumar Dhar and Nishchal K. Verma
Trajectory Tracking of Quad-Rotor UAV Using Fractional
Order PIl Dλ Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Heera Lal Maurya, L. Behera and Nishchal K. Verma
Evaluation of Security Metrics for System Security Analysis . . . . . . . . . 187
K. Narasimha Mallikarjunan, S. Mercy Shalinie, K. Sundarakantham
and M. Aarthi
Event-Triggered Sliding Mode Control Based Trajectory
Tracking in a Cyber-Physical Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Aniket K. Kar, Narendra Kumar Dhar and Nishchal K. Verma

Part V Data Mining and Visualization


Discovering Conversational Topics and Emotions Associated
with Demonetization Tweets in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Mitodru Niyogi and Asim Kumar Pal
Evaluation of Classifiers for Detection of Authorship
Attribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Smita Nirkhi
Contents ix

Performance Analysis of Uncertain K-means Clustering Algorithm


Using Different Distance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Swati Aggarwal, Nitika Agarwal and Monal Jain
Query Morphing: A Proximity-Based Data Exploration
for Query Reformulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Jay Patel and Vikram Singh
DDAM: Detecting DDoS Attacks Using Machine Learning
Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
K. Narasimha Mallikarjunan, A. Bhuvaneshwaran, K. Sundarakantham
and S. Mercy Shalinie
Community Detection Using Node Attributes: A Non-negative
Matrix Factorization Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Pranav Nerurkar, Madhav Chandane and Sunil Bhirud
A Comparative Analysis of Community Detection Algorithms
on Social Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Pranav Nerurkar, Madhav Chandane and Sunil Bhirud

Part VI Evolutionary Computation


Solving Rubik’s Cube Using Graph Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Chanchal Khemani, Jay Doshi, Juhi Duseja, Krapi Shah, Sandeep Udmale
and Vijay Sambhe
Multiobjective Virtual Machine Selection for Task Scheduling
in Cloud Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Ketaki Naik, G. Meera Gandhi and S. H. Patil
Hybrid Swarm Intelligence Algorithm for Detection of Health
of an Apple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Lavika Goel, Faizan Mustaq and Charu Tak

Part VII Fuzzy Inference Systems


Iris Data Classification Using Modified Fuzzy C Means . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Nisha Singh, Vivek Srivastava and Komal
A Type-2 Fuzzy Systems Approach for Clustering-Based
Identification of a T-S Regression Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Homanga Bharadhwaj, Vikas Singh and Nishchal K. Verma
Fuzzy Inference Network with Mamdani Fuzzy Inference System . . . . . 375
Nishchal K. Verma, Vikas Singh, Shreedharkumar Rajurkar
and Mohd Aqib
x Contents

An Empirical Comparison of Intelligent Controllers for the Ball


and Beam System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
S. Raghavendra Rao and Raghavendra V. Kulkarni
Health Monitoring of Main Battle Tank Engine Using
Mamdani-Type Fuzzy Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
Gaurav Saraswat, Seetaram Maurya and Nishchal K. Verma
Fuzzy Set Theoretic Similarity Measure for Finger Vein
Image Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Devarasan Ezhilmaran and P. Rose Bindu Joseph

Part VIII Fuzzy Knowledge Systems


Aerodynamic Parameter Modeling Using TS Fuzzy Systems
from Flight Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Dhan Jeet Singh, Nishchal K. Verma, A. K. Ghosh, Jitu Sanwale
and Appasaheb Malagaudanavar

Part IX Genetic Algorithms


Genetic-Algorithm-Based Optimization of Ant Colony Controller
for Fractional-Order Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
A. Kumar, V. Upadhyaya, A. Singh, P. Pandey and R. Sharma
A Hybrid GA-PSO Algorithm to Solve Traveling Salesman
Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Indresh Kumar Gupta, Samiya Shakil and Sadiya Shakil
A Computational Intelligence Approach for Cancer Detection
Using Artificial Immune System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Nishant Keni, Nipun Suradkar, Mihirraj Dixit, Irfan A. Siddavatam
and Faruk Kazi
Prediction of the State of Grinding Materials in Run Time
Using Genetic Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Sonali Sen, Arup Kumar Bhaumik and Jaya Sil

Part X Gesture Identification and Recognition


Motion Direction Code—A Novel Feature for Hand Gesture
Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
Bhumika Pathak and Anand Singh Jalal
Human Fall Detection System over IMU Sensors Using
Triaxial Accelerometer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
Shubham Ranakoti, Shagneet Arora, Shweta Chaudhary, Shakun Beetan,
Amtoj Singh Sandhu, Padmavati Khandnor and Poonam Saini
Contents xi

Part XI Industrial Applications of CI


Lateral-Directional Aerodynamic Parameter Estimation Using
Neuro-fuzzy-Based Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
Ajit Kumar and A. K. Ghosh
Personalized Automation of Electrical and Electronic Devices Using
Sensors and Artificial Intelligence—“The Intelligizer System” . . . . . . . . 523
Anish Batra, Guneet Singh Sethi and Suman Mann
A Privacy-Preserving Twin Support Vector Machine Classifier
for Vertical Partitioned Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Pritam Anand, Jay Pratap Pandey, Reshma Rastogi (nee Khemchandani)
and Suresh Chandra
Development of Parsimonious Orthonormal Basis Function
Models Using Particle Swarm Optimisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Lalu Seban and Binoy K. Roy
Fault Detection of Anti-friction Bearing Using AdaBoost
Decision Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565
Sangram S. Patil and Vikas M. Phalle

Part XII Industrial Sensing


Reduced Switching Loss Model of DPWM-Based MPDTC
of NPC Fed Induction Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 579
Shivani Patidar and Nishant Kashyap
People Counting with Overhead Camera Using Fuzzy-Based
Detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
Nishchal K. Verma, Raghav Dev, Seetaram Maurya,
Narendra Kumar Dhar and Pooja Agrawal
Modified Extended Kalman Filter Using Correlations
Between Measurement Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Ramanan Sekar, N. Sai Shankar, B. Shiva Shankar
and P. V. Manivannan
About the Editors

Dr. Nishchal K. Verma (SM’13) is an associate professor at the Department of


Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. He obtained
his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Integrative and
Translational Genomics, University of Tennessee, Memphis, TN, USA, and a
postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Computer Science, Louisiana
Tech University, Ruston, LA, USA. He was awarded the Devendra Shukla Young
Faculty Research Fellowship by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India
(2013–16), and Indo-Canadian SFTIG Award of CAD$6000 for Shastri Faculty
Training and Internationalization Program (2017–18). His research interests include
cognitive science, big data analysis, bioinformatics, intelligent data mining algo-
rithms and applications, computer vision and image processing, brain computer/
machine interface, machine intelligence, intelligent informatics, smart grids, intel-
ligent fault diagnosis systems, prognosis and health management, soft computing in
modelling and control, Internet of things/cyber-physical systems, intelligent agents
and their applications, fuzzy logic and controllers, deep learning of neural and fuzzy
networks, machine learning algorithms and computational intelligence. He has
authored more than 200 research papers and is an IETE fellow. He is currently an
editor of the IETE Technical Review Journal, an associate editor of the IEEE
Computational Intelligence Magazine and of the Transactions of the Institute of
Measurement and Control, UK, and an editorial board member for several journals
and conferences.

Dr. A. K. Ghosh is a professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering,


Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. He obtained his Ph.D. in Aerospace
from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. His areas of expertise are in
system identification through flight tests using conventional and neural
network-based methods, design of aircrafts and airborne projectiles, supercavitation
and unmanned aerial systems. He has authored more than 100 research papers.

xiii
Part I
Big Data Analytics
Analysis of Weather Data Using
Forecasting Algorithms

S. Poornima, M. Pushpalatha and J. Sujit Shankar

Abstract Predictive analytics is the current focus not only on business applications
but also it emerges in all types of applications which involves in the prediction of
future outcomes. This results in the development of various prediction algorithms
under the domain of machine learning, data mining, and forecasting. This paper
focuses on analysis of the data pattern and its behavior using univariate forecasting
model. Temperature is taken as the univariate observation from weather dataset, and
the forecast value is predicted using forecasting algorithms. The predicted forecast
value is compared with real-time data from which it is observed that level component
plays a major role than trend and seasonal component in real-time data, and the
predicted forecast value does not depend on size of the dataset.

Keywords Data analytics · Predictive analytics · Forecasting

1 Introduction

Data collected from various sources like sensors, satellite, social networks, online
transactions, etc. are mostly of unstructured and semi-structured form which are
nowadays termed as big data. These data are not stored in rows and columns with
defined data type in data warehouse due to unstructured in nature. Hence, scalable
racks of disks with parallel and distributed computing in a high processing environ-
ment called hyperscale computing environment is set up by Google, Apple, Facebook,
etc., to handle such data. The received data is stored as raw data itself in disks with
minor preprocessing like denoising to remove noise, and feature extraction obtains

S. Poornima (B) · M. Pushpalatha · J. Sujit Shankar


SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India
e-mail: poornima.se@ktr.srmuniv.ac.in
M. Pushpalatha
e-mail: pushpalatha.m@ktr.srmuiv.ac.in
J. Sujit Shankar
e-mail: sujitshankar1996@yahoo.co.in
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 3
N. K. Verma and A. K. Ghosh (eds.), Computational Intelligence: Theories,
Applications and Future Directions—Volume I, Advances in Intelligent Systems
and Computing 798, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1132-1_1
4 S. Poornima et al.

most relevant data by omitting irrelevant data. To undergo analytics like predictive and
prescriptive analytics on big data, these preprocessing steps form the basis to obtain
good results with satisfactory level of accuracy. The basic concept of big data and
various analytics types are explained in brief in our previously published paper [1].
Predictive analytics deals with determining the forecast values based on its previ-
ous observations. Many prediction algorithms like data mining algorithms, statistical
methods, forecasting methods and time series methods are used in real time to pre-
dict the future occurrences in the applications like share market in business, students
performance in education, players attempts in sports, weather predictions, etc. Some
of the forecast models are as follows:
(i) Simple mean: The average value of previous observations is taken as forecast
value in this method. Simple mean can be applied to datasets that have a con-
trolled pattern which does not deviate much higher than a certain level called
outliers [2]. Since all the observations are taken into consideration for calculat-
ing mean, even one value in a dataset deviation may affect the final mean value.
It is given by the following formula:

1
n
Fn+1  Yi
n i1

where F n+1 is the forecast value for n number of observations.


(ii) Moving average: This method finds average for immediate previous k values in
which k may be previous k days, weeks, months, or years [3]. Moving average
avoids old values and considers only latest values in the series of observations.
It reduces the impact of outliers by omitting the older values but still it suffers
in accuracy due to outliers occurred within k period of time. It is given by the
following formula:

1 
n
Fn+1  Yi
k in−k+1

where k is the order of forecast.


(iii) Single exponential smoothing (SES): The forecast value is determined by the
previous forecast and previous observation from the dataset, and it uses a
smoothing constant α to control the level of data pattern [4]. This constant
is used in the adjustment of previous forecast error. SES formula is given by

Fn+1  Fn + α(Yn − Fn )

where Yn − Fn is termed as forecast error and α lies between 0 and 1. When α is 0,


then there is no control over level or adjustment in forecast error, whereas increasing
Analysis of Weather Data Using Forecasting Algorithms 5

the α value leads to substantial increase in the control on level and forecast error.
The α value can also be made adaptive by instead of considering fixed value, it made
be changed with respect to the change in the pattern of data.
(iv) Holt’s linear method: This method includes finding the forecast value by con-
sidering the level and trend of the data pattern. Thus, it includes two smoothing
constants α and β to have control over level and trend of the data [5]. The
formula for Holt’s linear method is given by

Fn+m  L n + bn m

where L n is the level of the series forn observations, bn is the trend of the series, and
m is the number of periods to forecast ahead.
(v) Holt-Winters method: It predicts the forecast value through seasonal component
also along with level and trend [6, 7]. Hence, it uses three constants α, β, and γ
for level, trend, and seasonal adjustments. The formula for Holt-Winters method
is given by

Fn+m  (L n + bn m)Sn−s+m

where S is the seasonal component and s is the length of seasonality.


The research paper is continued with the implementation, discussions on the
results, and conclusion of the predictions made with the weather dataset.

2 Implementation

The dataset used for this analysis is obtained from Central Research Institute for Dry-
land Agriculture (CRIDA) which is a National Research Institute under the Indian
Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). This dataset is large enough that con-
tain weather data from the year 1958–2014, nearly 56 years of data with 20,820
rows (days) and attributes like temperature, humidity, wind speed, sunshine, etc.
The temperature attribute is taken for analysis, and it was undergone for predicting
the forecast value and compared with the available real-time data, i.e., the average
temperature from the year 1958–2013 is used as input for the forecasting algorithms
and predicts the temperature of the year 2014. Real-time temperature (in Celsius)
of the year 2014 is already available in the dataset and hence it was compared with
the value predicted by the algorithms and the percentage of accuracy is determined.
The data is collected from sensors so it is not purely structural data, and hence it was
converted to comma-separated file (CSV) for easy access. The implementation is
done using R programming which contains various packages for statistical analysis
and techniques. The dataset is undergone for few steps of preprocessing to apply the
data in R functions. The preprocessing details are given below:
6 S. Poornima et al.

(i) The average temperature was read in a variable as a dataframe. This dataframe
is converted to DATE type to make time series conversion easier.
(ii) Convert this dataframe to zoo object by using zoo() function in zoo package (to
be downloaded and installed).
iii) The time series object can be obtained using ts() function in zoo package.
The reason to convert the dataframe to zoo object followed by time series object
without converting directly to time series is that compatibility errors may occur
in direct conversion because of the frequency exceeding beyond 12. This time
series object can be undergone with forecast predictions using forecast functions
like rollmean() for moving average, HoltWinters(), etc. The forecast functions are
built-in functions in R which contains several parameters that can be set up as per
the need of the research. In our implementation, every 18 years data are separately
analyzed as individual phase to study the behavior of the data pattern at each stage
and the entire dataset temperature value is taken for prediction as the last phase.

3 Analysis and Discussions

It is very difficult to analyze the real-time dataset since always the real-time dataset
values will not follow any particular pattern or range. It may be within certain level
for some interval of time or it may have abrupt change at certain period. In this paper,
as it was mentioned in implementation part, the results of various phases are given
in Table 1.

3.1 Phase I

The results in the table clearly show that the accuracy is less for the data pattern
that lies between the year 1958–1975, which means that the range of celsius value
of the temperature has much variation or dispersion with the real-time data in the
data points such that whose difference between the minimum and maximum value
is high compared to other phases. The minimum temperature in this phase is 8.6
and maximum temperature is 38.9 °C, respectively, which has high difference in
temperature fluctuation compared to other phases, which forms the maximum and
minimum temperature value for the entire dataset also. This phase gains high accuracy
for simple mean method than other phases as shown in Fig. 1, since the central
tendency (26.47 °C) of this method is merely near to real-time temperature (24.15 °C).
The reason behind this mean value is calculated by considering all data points which
includes the degree of diversity in that phase and the data points do not follow level,
trend, or seasonal pattern. All the three components show almost same range of
accuracy that converge to low value (maximum 0.631 for level) compared to other
Analysis of Weather Data Using Forecasting Algorithms 7

Table 1 The results of forecasting algorithms applied with constant values (α, β, γ ) used, the
comparison of actual value with predicted value, and accuracy level in percentage
Algorithm Actual Alpha (α) Beta (β) Gamma (γ ) Accuracy (%)
applied value/predicted fit
Year 1958–2013 (complete dataset)
Simple mean 19.85/26.67 NA NA NA 65.6
Moving 19.85/20.83 NA NA NA 90.26
averages
(order  3 days)
Holt-Winters 19.85/18.26 0.7428 NA NA 92.00
(only level)
Holt-Winters 19.85/18.23 0.7727 0.01573 False 91.87
(level and trend)
Holt-Winters 19.85/18.25 0.262 False 0.0550 91.96
(level and
seasonal)
Holt-Winters 19.85/17.78 0.262 0.01558 0.0492 89.6
(level, trend,
and seasonal)
Year 1958–1975 (Phase I)
Simple mean 24.15/26.47 NA NA NA 98.09
Moving 24.15/18.68 NA NA NA 77.36
averages
(order  3 days)
Holt-Winters 24.15/18.63 0.6317 NA NA 77.14
(only level)
Holt-Winters 24.15/18.61 0.6911 0.03936 False 77.06
(level and trend)
Holt-Winters 24.15/18.86 0.5953 False 0.1372 78.13
(level and
seasonal)
Holt-Winters 24.15/18.17 0.6031 0.00363 0.1389 75.31
(level, trend,
and seasonal)
Year 1976–1994 (Phase II)
Simple mean 17.55/26.61 NA NA NA 48.33
Moving 17.55/19.47 NA NA NA 89.04
averages
(order  3 days)
Holt-Winters 17.55/17.70 0.8279 NA NA 94.25
(only level)
(continued)
8 S. Poornima et al.

Table 1 (continued)
Algorithm Actual Alpha (α) Beta (β) Gamma (γ ) Accuracy (%)
applied value/predicted fit
Holt-Winters 17.55/17.68 0.8343 0.00473 False 99.22
(level and trend)
Holt-Winters 17.55/17.83 0.7657 False 0.2563 94.21
(level and
seasonal)
Holt-Winters 17.55/17.17 0.7675 0.00164 0.2230 97.84
(level, trend,
and seasonal)
Year 1995–2013 (Phase III)
Simple mean 19.85/26.87 NA NA NA 64.59
Moving 19.85/19.6 NA NA NA 98.74
averages
(order  3 days)
Holt-Winters 19.85/19.31 0.8055 NA NA 97.32
(only level)
Holt-Winters 19.85/19.29 0.8192 0.01235 False 97.19
(level and trend)
Holt-Winters 19.85/19.51 0.7448 False 0.2563 98.29
(level and
seasonal)
Holt-Winters 19.85/19.16 0.7376 0.00079 0.2445 96.53
(level, trend,
and seasonal)

Fig. 1 The plot for the comparison of accuracy (%) of algorithms used as mentioned in Table 1

phases; hence, all the three components do not have more influence on the data points.
Thus, the accuracy of the algorithms is low in that phase except for simple mean.
Analysis of Weather Data Using Forecasting Algorithms 9

3.2 Phase II

In this phase, the data between the year 1976–1994 is taken for analysis whose
accuracy levels are highly better (maximum 99.2%) compared to phases I and III
which does not significantly vary. Except simple mean and moving average method,
all the other four methods result in acceptable level of accuracy in phase II as shown
in Fig. 1, whereas in phase III all methods give good accuracy except simple mean.
Data points follow certain level, trend, and seasonal component in this phase but
level component has more influence because the converging value of α is high than
the other two. The level lies between 12.75 °C as minimum value and 37.45 °C
as maximum value whose difference is less compared to previous phase and thus
the accuracy rises. When the level component alone is applied, it gives 94.25% of
accuracy, but when trend component is also applied along with level it is increased
to 99.2% which shows that a high contribution is on level and trend has very less
contribution compared to level, that is, only 3% of accuracy is raised by trend where
both components are added in the formula. On the other hand, applying level and
seasonal component gives almost same percentage of accuracy 94.21% as that of
applying level only which shows that the seasonal component does not have any
effect in this set of data points. Finally, when applying all the three components,
the accuracy is 97.8% whose value increases by adding trend component along with
level and seasonal component. Thus, we conclude that the data series have more
fluctuation and hence α is converged to high value around 0.8 that controls the series
to predict better forecast value. The contribution of trend is considerable since even
the data points continuously do not increase or decrease but it follows the trend for
very short interval or period that can be viewed in the graph, and hence β value always
has low convergence. At last, the seasonal component always lies around 0.2 which
shows that seasonality adjustment is high compared to trend but very less compared
to level, from which we understand that the series has very short-term seasonality
which can be almost considered as unseasonal for a longer period of time.

3.3 Phase III

This phase is the analysis of data from 1995 to 2013, which is almost same as phase II
whose accuracy values differ from 1 to 4% only. All the methods give high accuracy
except simple mean method, and the reason might be that the data series was applied
with high control using the constants. Regarding the forecasting components, the
discussion is same as phase II but the series has slightly improved seasonal cycle
period than the other phases which can be understood from γ value that converges
around 0.25 and obtains good accuracy by enabling the seasonal component.
On analyzing the entire data series of 56 years, the accuracy value increased than
phase I but decreased than phases II and III as shown in Fig. 1. The reduced accuracy
than phases II and III is due to data points of phase I which has highly dispersed and
10 S. Poornima et al.

irregular. So it is understood that forecast accuracy of this dataset does not depend on
size, since phase I accuracy is very less compared to entire dataset. Another important
issue to be noted is, on implementing the forecasting algorithm in R programming,
the constants such as α, β, and γ values are automatically applied by R based on the
data series. But on executing these algorithms with trial and error, i.e., by applying the
constant values from 0.1 to 0.9 manually, there exists a small difference in forecast
value so that in accuracy too. For example, in Table 1, on applying the Holt-Winters
method (with level and trend), the obtained forecast value is 18.237 °C with accuracy
of 91.87 for the α value converged at 0.7727 by R programming, whereas on trial
and error, α converges to 0.9999 that leads to 18.399 °C whose accuracy increased to
92.3. It is also found that there is no difference in β value taken by R and manually
applied value which may also occur in some cases. The difference in accuracy is just
0.5% for α which is a negligible value but this may not be the same for all data series
of all datasets. Since the change in constant value leads to change in forecast value,
it is advisable to apply trial and error for research purpose, whereas it is difficult to
apply in real-time business applications since it may involve a lot of parameters and
large digits of numbers.

4 Conclusion

This paper conveys the importance of predictive analytics in various applications


and gives an overview of forecasting algorithms. Forecasting algorithms have been
applied to predict the forecast value of weather dataset which is larger in size. The
preprocessing steps to be carried out for preparing the data to apply on the forecasting
algorithms are also given. The implementation results for various forecasting algo-
rithms on several phases of data series are projected along with the real-time actual
data with its accuracies. Finally, the analysis shows that the accuracy depends on
pattern of the dataset not on size of the data. It also proves that most of the real-time
data are irregular in nature, so adjusting the level component takes much more part
than seasonal and at last trend. The results show that deciding the constant values
based on the time period also has significant change in forecast.

References

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Stat. Methods 7(1), 187–197 (2008)
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5. Hyndman, R.J., Khandakar, Y.: Automatic time series forecasting: the forecast package for R.
J. Stat. Softw. 27(3), 1–22 (2008)
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8. Crida Homepage, http://www.crida.in/. Last accessed 25 May 2017
K-Data Depth Based Clustering
Algorithm

Ishwar Baidari and Channamma Patil

Abstract This paper proposes a new data clustering algorithm based on data depth.
In the proposed algorithm the centroids of the K-clusters are calculated using Maha-
lanobis data depth method. The performance of the algorithm called K-Data Depth
Based Clustering Algorithm (K-DBCA) is evaluated in R using datasets defined
in the mlbench package of R and from UCI Machine Learning Repository, yields
good clustering results and is robust to outliers. In addition, it is invariant to affine
transformations and it is also tested for face recognition which yields better accuracy.

Keywords Data depth · Outlier · Cluster analysis · Affine invariant

1 Introduction

Cluster analysis or Clustering is a data analysis tool which explores the data instances
into groups (clusters) in such a way that the similarities between the instances is max-
imal within the cluster and is minimal outside the cluster. There are many applications
of clustering, including Customer segmentation [1], image recognition [2], genetic
sequencing [3] or human mobility patterns [4]. A lot of research has been done in
clustering and many classification of clustering algorithms are found in the litera-
ture namely Hierarchical clustering [5], Density clustering [6], Grid clustering [7]
and Partitioning clustering [8]. The most commonly used clustering algorithm in
data mining is K-Means clustering algorithm [9]which is based on the principle of

I. Baidari (B) · C. Patil


Department of Computer Science, Karnatak University,
Dharwad 580003, Karnataka, India
e-mail: ishwar_sp@yahoo.co.in
C. Patil
e-mail: channamma.shivu@gmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 13


N. K. Verma and A. K. Ghosh (eds.), Computational Intelligence: Theories,
Applications and Future Directions—Volume I, Advances in Intelligent Systems
and Computing 798, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1132-1_2
14 I. Baidari and C. Patil

Fig. 1 Mahalanobis depth


contours

squared error [9, 10]. This paper proposes a new algorithm based on Data Depth
and we named it as K-data depth based clustering algorithm (K-DBCA). Data depth
gives the deepness of an instance in a dataset [11] which is shown in Fig. 1 using the
Mahalanobis depth over iris dataset.
In Sects. 2 and 3 the details of data depth and the proposed method are given.
Sections 4 and 4.1 presents comparative outcomes of the proposed method with K-
Means with regard to accurateness using data sets defined in mlbench package of R
and from UCI Machine Learning repository. Section 4.2 demonstrates experimental
results of the method with regard to invariance to affine transformations and Sect. 4.3
presents comparative experimental clustering results of the algorithm with K-Means
in terms of robustness to outliers. In Sect. 4.4 we tested our algorithm on face recog-
nition and finally in Sect. 5 we have given the conclusion of the proposed method
with limitations and future enhancement.

2 Data Depth

Data depth gives the centrality of an object in a data cloud and it is an excellent
tool for multivariate data analysis. Without making prior assumptions about the
probability distributions of a dataset, we can analyze, quantify and visualize it using
data depth. Data depth assigns a value between 0 and 1 to each data point in the
dataset which specifies the centrality or deepness of that point in the dataset. The
point with maximum depth will be the deepest point in the dataset. Various data
depth methods are found in the literature, examples include convex-hull peeling
depth [12, 13], half-space depth [14, 15], simplicial depth [16], regression depth
[17, 18] and L1 depth [19]. Data depth has a very powerful future as a data analytic
tool, but due to the shortfall of powerful tools for big data analytics using depth, it
is not widely used. In order that a depth function serve most effectively as a tool
providing a deepest-outlyingness order of instances of a dataset, it should satisfy the
K-Data Depth Based Clustering Algorithm 15

properties as mentioned in [20]. For evaluation of the proposed algorithm we have


used Mahalanobis depth [20, 21] which is given as:

M D (y; Yn ) = [1 + (y − ȳ)T Y −1 (y − ȳ)]−1 (1)

where ȳ and Y are the mean and covariance matrix of Yn respectively. Maximum
depth point is a center point, higher depth value points are near the center and the
lower depth value points are outliers. Since the mean is sensitive to outliers Eq. 1 is
modified as below:

M D (y; Yn ) = [1 + (y − Yi )T Y −1 (y − Yi )]−1 (2)

In this equation point Yi is used in place of mean. Using this equation depth of each
point within a data cloud can be calculated.

3 Algorithm

Some of the concepts required for the formulation of the proposed algorithm are
defined below:

Definition 1 Center-point: A point xi is said to be a center-point of cluster C


with points C = {x1 , x2 . . . xm } if Md (xi , C) is maximum, where
Md (xi , C) is the Mahalanobis data depth of point xi in cluster C.
Definition 2 Neighbors: A point xi is a neighbor of a cluster C j if the distance
D(xi , C j (center point)) is minimum of all the clusters C, where
D(xi , C j (center point)) is the euclidean distance between point xi
and the center-point of cluster C j and C is a subset of dataset X such
that C = {C1 , C2 , . . . , Cn }.

Steps:
1. The algorithm divides n data points into k subsets. Then the initial center-points
for each subset are calculated. [Algorithm 1 line no. 4–10]
2. The algorithm computes the neighbors of each cluster. [Algorithm 1 line no. 13]
3. Then the algorithm computes the updated center-points for each cluster. [Algo-
rithm 1 line no. 14–15]
4. The algorithm compares the previous cluster center-points (CP1) and the updated
cluster center-points (CP2), if CP1 = CP2 then the previous center-points (CP1)
are updated with new center-points (CP2) and the loop continues from step 12,
else the loop terminates. [Algorithm 1 line no. 16–19]
16 I. Baidari and C. Patil

The computational complexity of finding the Mahalanobis depth of an instance


in a dataset with size N is O(N ). Therefore the time complexity of the proposed
algorithm using Mahalanobis depth is O(I ∗ K ∗ N 2 ) where I is the no. of iterations,
K is the no. of clusters and N is the no. of instances in the dataset.

4 Results

The proposed method is evaluated for three features: accuracy, invariance to affine
transformations and robustness to outliers and it is also tested for face recognition.
The K-DBCA algorithm is evaluated in R using the clustering datasets from mlbench
[22] and UCI machine learning repository. Figure 3a represents the shapes dataset
from mlbench package of R. The data set is composed of a Gaussian, square, triangle
and wave in two dimensions consisting of 4000 instances and 3 attributes. Among
the three attributes one attribute is the class attribute which we have taken as “ground
truth”. Few datasets were made based on the original data set for testing invariance
to affine transformations like rotation, scaling, or translation. Figure 4a represents
the dataset which is rotated by 45◦ in counterclockwise direction. For testing robust-
ness to outliers we considered the datasets with outliers from UCI machine learning
repository including, wine, stampout and pen. Adjusted Rand Index (ARI) [23] was
used to examine the clustering outcome of the proposed method with the ground truth
information of the original data. The ARI range is between –1 to 1, where 1 indicates
a perfect matching while 0 and negative values indicate poor matching. How much
data is misplaced during the clustering by a method can be analyzed by Variation of
K-Data Depth Based Clustering Algorithm 17

Information (VI) [24]. The VI index is 0 when result obtained by a method is same
as the ground truth. Here the proposed method’s outcomes are examined with the
ground truth information using ARI and VI.

4.1 Clustering Accuracy

The first experiment investigated the accurateness of the proposed method on the
basis of ground truth information. The algorithm is evaluated on different datasets
from UCI Machine learning repository, including Iris, Seed, Breast Cancer datasets
and from mlbench, smily and shapes datasets were considered. The details of these
datasets and the accuracies obtained using the K-DBCA algorithm is given in Table 1.
The clustering outcome was examined with the “ground truth” information of the
original dataset using ARI and VI index as shown in Fig. 2a, b. Figure 3a shows one
of the original dataset and Fig. 3b represents the clustering result of the algorithm on
the same dataset shown in Fig. 3a.

4.2 Invariance to Affine Transformations

The performance of the proposed algorithm with respect to invariance to affine trans-
formations like rotation, scaling and translation was tested by making few more
datasets of the original dataset and transformations were carried out on these new
datasets. Figure 4a shows one of the invariance to affine transformation example in
which the original dataset has been rotated by counterclockwise 45◦ and Fig. 4b
shows the clustering result of the K-DBCA algorithm for the same affine invariant
example. Figure 4c shows an original image that has been rotated by clockwise 45◦
and Fig. 4d shows the clustering result of the K-DBCA algorithm for the same rotat-
ed image. As expected from Fig. 4b, d, the K-DBCA algorithm generated coherent
clusters, irrespective of affine transformation.

Table 1 Comparison of clustering performance for different datasets


Datasets Clusters Dimension No. of Accuracy Parameter
instances
K-Means K-Depth
(%) (%)
Iris 3 5 150 89.33 92.66 k=3
Seed 3 8 210 89.52 90.48 k=3
Breast 2 10 699 95.85 95.57 k=2
Cancer
Smily 4 3 500 95.40 95.00 k=4
Shapes 4 3 8000 99.50 99.50 k=4
18 I. Baidari and C. Patil

(a) ARI (b) VI Index

Fig. 2 Clustering results using the ARI and VI index

(a) Original (b) K-DBCA clustering example

Fig. 3 Experiment results

For the affine invariant tests clustering results were compared with the “ground
truth” information of the original dataset using ARI and VI index as shown in
Fig. 5a, b.
The performance of the proposed algorithm with respect to invariance to affine
transformations was also tested with real dataset. For real dataset we took a UAV
image from OpenDroneMap as shown in Fig. 6a. The image was rotated by 10◦
clockwise and scaled by 0.8 × X-axis as shown in Fig. 6b. The features from these
images were extracted using AKAZE feature detection [25] method as shown in
Fig. 6c, d. Then the algorithm was applied on these features. The clustering results
are shown in Fig. 7.

4.3 Robustness to Outliers

In this experiment we tested the robustness of the algorithm to outliers. The algorithm
is evaluated on different datasets with outliers from UCI Machine learning repository,
K-Data Depth Based Clustering Algorithm 19

(a) Affine invariant example (b) K-DBCA Clustering result

(c) Affine invariant example (d) K-DBCA Clustering result

Fig. 4 Affine invariance clustering results

(a) ARI (b) VI Index

Fig. 5 Comparison of results using the ARI and VI index


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“Spare no money, no time, no labor,” he said, “but let the criminal
be found. Sir Ronald is too ill, too overwhelmed, to give any orders at
present; but you know what should be done. Do it promptly.”
And Captain Johnstone had at once taken every necessary step.
There was something ghastly in the pretty town of Leeholme, for
there on the walls was the placard, worded:
“MURDER!
“Two hundred pounds will be given to any one bringing
certain information as to a murder committed on Tuesday
morning, June 19th, in the Holme Woods. Apply to
Captain Johnstone, Police Station, Leeholme.”
Gaping rustics read it, and while they felt heartily sorry for the
unhappy lady they longed to know something about it for the sake of
the reward.
But no one called on Captain Johnstone—no one had a word
either of certainty or surmise. The police officers, headed by
intelligent men, made diligent search in the neighborhood of the
pool; but nothing was found. There was no mark of any struggle; the
soft, thick grass gave no sign of heavy footsteps. No weapon could
be found, no trace of blood-stained fingers. It was all a mystery dark
as night, without one gleam of light.
The pool had always been a favorite place with the hapless lady;
and, knowing that, Sir Ronald had ordered a pretty, quaint golden
chair to be placed there for her; and on the very morning when the
event happened Lady Clarice Alden had taken her book and had
gone to the fatal spot to enjoy the beauty of the morning, the
brightness of the sun and the odor of the flowers. The book she had
been reading lay on the ground, where it had evidently fallen from
her hands. But there was no sign of anything wrong; the bluebells
had not even been trampled under foot.
After twenty-four hours’ search the police relinquished the matter.
Captain Johnstone instituted vigorous inquiries as to all the beggars
and tramps who had been in the neighborhood—nothing suspicious
came to light. One man, a traveling hawker, a gaunt, fierce-looking
man, with a forbidding face, had been passing through Holme
Woods, and the police tracked him; but when he was examined he
was so evidently unconscious and ignorant of the whole matter it
would have been folly to detain him.
In the stately mansion of Aldenmere a coroner’s inquest had
been held. Mrs. Glynn declared that it was enough to make the
family portraits turn on the wall—enough to bring the dead to life.
Such a desecration as that had never occurred before. But the
coroner was very grave. Such a murder, he said, was a terrible thing;
the youth, beauty and position of the lady made it doubly horrible. He
showed the jury how intentional the murder must have been—it was
no deed done in hot haste. Whoever had crept with stealthy steps to
the lady’s side, whoever had placed his hand underneath the white
lace mantle which she wore, and with desperate, steady aim stabbed
her to the heart, had done it purposely and had meditated over it.
The jury saw that the white lace mantle must either have been raised
or a hand stealthily crept beneath it, for the cut that pierced the
bodice of the dress was not in the mantle.
He saw the red puncture on the white skin. One of the jury was a
man who had traveled far and wide.
“It was with no English weapon this was done,” he said. “I
remember a case very similar when I was staying in Sicily; a man
there was killed, and there was no other wound on his body save a
small red circle like this; afterward I saw the very weapon that he had
been slain with.”
“What was it like?” asked the coroner eagerly.
“A long, thin, very sharp instrument, a species of Sicilian dagger. I
heard that years ago ladies used to wear them suspended from the
waist as a kind of ornament. I should not like to be too certain, but it
seems to me this wound has been caused by the same kind of
weapon.”
By the coroner’s advice the suggestion was not made public.
The verdict returned was one the public had anticipated: “Willful
murder against some person or persons unknown.”
Then the inquest was over, and nothing remained but to bury
Lady Clarice Alden. Dr. Mayne, however, had not come to the end of
his resources yet.
“The local police have failed,” he said to Sir Ronald; “we will send
to Scotland Yard at once.”
And Sir Ronald bade him do whatever in the interests of justice
he considered best.
In answer to his application came Sergeant Hewson, who was
generally considered the shrewdest and cleverest man in England.
“If Sergeant Hewson gives a thing up, no one else can succeed,”
was a remark of general use in the profession. He seemed to have
an instinctive method of finding out that which completely baffled
others.
“The mystery will soon be solved now,” said Dr. Mayne;
“Sergeant Hewson will not be long in suspense.”
The sergeant made his home at Aldenmere; he wished to be
always on the spot.
“The murder must have been done either by some one in the
house or some one out of it,” he said; “let us try the inside first.”
So he watched and waited; he talked to the servants, who
considered him “a most affable gent;” he listened to them; he
examined everything belonging to them—in vain.
Lady Clarice Alden had been beloved and admired by her
servants.
“She was very high, poor thing!—high and proud, but as
generous and kind a lady as ever lived. So beautiful, too, with a
queer sort of way with her! She never spoke an unkind word to any
of us in her life.”
He heard nothing but praises of her. Decidedly, in all that large
household Lady Clarice had no enemy. He inquired all about her
friends, and he left no stone unturned; but, for once in his life,
Sergeant Hewson was baffled, and the fact did not please him.
CHAPTER IV.
KENELM EYRLE.

It was the night before the funeral, and Sir Ronald sat in his study
alone. His servants spoke of him in lowered voices, for since the
terrible day of the murder the master of Aldenmere had hardly tasted
food. More than once he had rung the bell, and, when it was
answered, with white lips and stone-cold face, he had asked for a
tumbler of brandy.
It was past ten o’clock now, and the silent gloom seemed to
gather in intensity, when suddenly there came a fierce ring at the hall
door, so fierce, so imperative, so vehement that one and all the
frightened servants sprang up, and the old housekeeper, with folded
hands, prayed, “Lord have mercy on us!”
Two of the men went, wondering who it was, and what was
wanted.
“Not a very decent way to ring, with one lying dead in the house,”
said one to the other; but, even before they reached the hall door, it
was repeated more imperatively than before.
They opened it quickly. There stood a gentleman who had
evidently ridden hard, for his horse was covered with foam; he had
dismounted in order to ring.
“Is this horrible, accursed story true?” he asked, in a loud, ringing
voice. “Is Lady Alden dead?”
“It is quite true, sir,” replied one of the men, quick to recognize the
true aristocrat.
“Where is Sir Ronald?” he asked, quickly.
“He cannot see any one.”
“Nonsense!” interrupted the stranger, “he must see me; I insist
upon seeing him. Take my card and tell him I am waiting. You send a
groom to attend to my horse; I have ridden hard.”
Both obeyed him, and the gentleman sat down in the entrance
hall while the card was taken to Sir Ronald. The servant rapped
many times, but no answer came; at length he opened the door.
There sat Sir Ronald, just as he had done the night before—his head
bent, his eyes closed, his face bearing most terrible marks of
suffering.
The man went up to him gently.
“Sir Ronald,” he asked, “will you pardon me? The gentleman who
brought this card insists upon seeing you, and will not leave the
house until he has done so. I would not have intruded, Sir Ronald,
but we thought perhaps it might be important.”
Sir Ronald took the card and looked at the name. As he did so a
red flush covered his pale face, and his lips trembled.
“I will see him,” he said, in a faint, hoarse voice.
“May I bring you some wine or brandy, Sir Ronald?” asked the
man.
“No, nothing. Ask Mr. Eyrle to come here.”
He stood quite still until the stranger entered the room; then he
raised his haggard face, and the two men looked at each other.
“You have suffered,” said Kenelm Eyrle; “I can see that. I never
thought to meet you thus, Sir Ronald.”
“No,” said the faint voice.
“We both loved her. You won her, and she sent me away. But, by
heaven! if she had been mine, I would have taken better care of her
than you have done.”
“I did not fail in care or kindness,” was the meek reply.
“Perhaps I am harsh,” he said, more gently. “You look very ill, Sir
Ronald; forgive me if I am abrupt; my heart is broken with this terrible
story.”
“Do you think it is less terrible for me?” said Sir Ronald, with a
sick shudder. “Do you understand how awful even the word murder
is?”
“Yes; it is because I understand so well that I am here. Ronald,”
he added, “there has been ill feeling between us since you won the
prize I would have died for. We were like brothers when we were
boys; even now, if you were prosperous and happy, as I have seen
you in my dreams, I would shun, avoid and hate you, if I could.”
His voice grew sweet and musical with the deep feelings stirred
in his heart.
“Now that you are in trouble that few men know; now that the
bitterest blow the hand of fate can give has fallen on you, let me be
your true friend, comrade and brother again.”
He held out his hand and clasped the cold, unyielding one of his
friend.
“I will help you as far as one man can help another, Ronald. We
will bury the old feud and forget everything except that we have a
wrong to avenge, a crime to punish, a murderer to bring to justice!”
“You are very good to me, Kenelm,” said the broken voice; “you
see that I have hardly any strength or energy.”
“I have plenty,” said Kenelm Eyrle, “and it shall be used for one
purpose. Ronald, will you let me see her? She is to be buried to-
morrow—the fairest face the sun ever shone on will be taken away
forever. Let me see her; do not refuse me. For the memory of the
boy’s love so strong between us once—for the memory of the man’s
love and the man’s sorrow that has laid my life bare and waste, let
me see her, Ronald?”
“I will go with you,” said Sir Ronald Alden; and, for the first time
since the tragedy in its full horror had been known to him, Sir Ronald
left the library and went to the room where his dead wife lay.
CHAPTER V.
WHICH LOVED HER BEST?

They went through the silent house without another word,


through the long corridors so lately gay with the sound of laughing
voices and the lustre of perfumed silken gowns. The gloom seemed
to deepen, the very lights that should have lessened it looked
ghastly.
They came to the door of my lady’s room, and there for one-half
minute Sir Ronald paused. It was as though he feared to open it.
Then he made an effort. Kenelm saw him straighten his tall figure
and raise his head as though to defy fear. With reverent touch he
turned the handle and they entered the room together. Loving hands
had been busy there; it was hung round with black velvet and lighted
with innumerable wax tapers. She had loved flowers so well in life
that in death they had gathered them round her. Vases of great,
luscious white roses; clusters of the sad passion flower; masses of
carnations—all mixed with green leaves and hawthorn branches.
In the midst of the room stood the stately bedstead, with its black
velvet hangings. Death lost its gloom there, for the quiet figure
stretched upon it was as beautiful as though sculptured from purest
marble; it was the very beauty and majesty of death without its
horror.
The white hands were folded and laid on the heart that was never
more to suffer either pleasure or pain. Fragrant roses were laid on
her breast, lilies and myrtle at her feet.
But Kenelm noted none of these details—he went up to her
hurriedly, as though she had been living, and knelt down by her side.
He was strong and proud, undemonstrative as are most English
gentlemen, but all this deserted him now. He laid his head down on
the folded hands and wept aloud.
“My darling! my lost, dear love, so young to die! If I could but
have given my life for you!” His hot tears fell on the marble breast.
Sir Ronald stood with folded arms, watching him, thinking to himself:
“He loved her best of all—he loved her best!”
For some minutes the deep silence was unbroken save by the
deep-drawn, bitter sobs of the unhappy man kneeling there. When
the violence of his weeping was exhausted he rose and bent over
her.
“She is beautiful in death as she was in life,” he said. “Oh,
Clarice, my darling! If I were but lying there in your place. Do you
know, Ronald, how and where I saw her last?”
The haggard, silent face was raised in its despairing quiet to him.
“It was three weeks before her wedding day, and I was mad with
wounded love and sorrow. I went over to Mount Severn—not to talk
to her, Ronald, not to try to induce her to break her faith—only to
look at her and bear away with me the memory of her sweet face
forever and forever. It is only two years last June. I walked through
the grounds, and she was sitting in the center of a group of young
girls, her bridesmaids who were to be, her fair hair catching the
sunbeams, her lovely face brighter than the morning, the love-light in
her eyes; and she was talking of you, Ronald, every word full of
music, yet every word pierced my heart with hot pain. I did not go to
speak to her, but I stood for an hour watching her face, impressing
its glorious young beauty on my mind. I said to myself that I bade her
farewell, and the thought came to my mind, ‘How will she look when I
see her again?’”
Then he seemed to forget Sir Ronald was present, and he bent
again over the beautiful face.
“If you could only look at me once, only unclose those white lips
and speak to me, who loves you as I do, my lost darling.”
He took one of the roses from the folded hands and kissed it
passionately as he had kissed her lips.
“You cannot hear me, Clarice,” at last he murmured, “at least with
mortal ears; you cannot see me; but listen, my darling, I loved you
better than I loved my life; I kiss your dead lips, sweet, and I swear
that I will never kiss another woman. You are gone now where all
secrets are known; you know now how I loved you; and when I go to
the eternal land you will meet me. No love shall replace you. I will be
true to you, dead, as I was while you were living. Do you hear me,
Clarice?”
All the time he poured out this passionate torrent of words Sir
Ronald stood with bowed head and folded arms.
“I kiss those white lips again, love, and on them I swear to know
no rest, no pleasure, no repose until I have brought the man who
murdered you to answer for his crime; I swear to devote all the talent
and wealth God has given me to that purpose; I will give my days
and nights—my thoughts, time, energies—all for it; and when I have
avenged you I will come and kneel down by your grave and tell you
so.”
Then he looked up at Sir Ronald.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “What steps shall you
take?”
“Everything possible has been done. I know no more that I can
do.”
Kenelm Eyrle looked up at him.
“Do you mean to sleep, to eat, to rest, while the man who did that
dastardly deed lives?”
His eyes flashed fire.
“I shall do my best,” Sir Ronald said, with a heavy groan. “God
help us all. It has been a dreadful mistake, Kenelm. You loved her
best.”
“She did not think so then, but she knows now. I will live to
avenge her. I ask from Heaven no greater favor than that I may bring
the murderer to justice. I shall do it, Ronald; a certain instinct tells me
so. When I do, I shall show him no mercy; he showed none to her. If
the mother who bore him knelt at my feet and asked me to have pity
on him, I would not. If the child who calls him father clung round my
neck and prayed me with tears and asked for mercy, I would show
none.”
“Nor would I,” said Sir Ronald. Then Kenelm Eyrle bent down
over the dead body.
“Good-by, my love,” he said, “until eternity; good-by.”
With reverent hands he drew the white lace round her, and left
her to the deep, dreamless repose that was never more to be
broken.
He went downstairs with Sir Ronald, but he did not enter the
library again.
“I am going home,” he said. “I shall not intrude any longer,
Ronald.”
“You will come to-morrow?” said Sir Ronald, as Kenelm stood at
the hall door.
“Yes, I will pay her that mark of respect,” he said, “and I will live to
avenge her.”
So they parted, and Sir Ronald, going back to the old seat in the
library, remained there until morning dawned.
CHAPTER VI.
KENELM EYRLE’S VOW.

In the picturesque and beautiful country of Loamshire they still tell


of the funeral, the extraordinary crowd of people assembled to pay
the last mark of homage to Lady Clarice Alden.
Perhaps most pity of all was given to the hapless lady’s mother,
Mrs. Severn, a handsome, stately, white-haired old lady, little
accustomed to demonstration of any kind. She had apologized for
her excessive grief by saying to every one:
“She was my only child, you know, and I loved her so dearly—my
only one.”
The long ceremony was over at last and the mourners returned to
Aldenmere.
The morning afterward the blinds were drawn. Once more the
blessed sunlight filled the rooms with light and warmth; once more
the servants spoke in their natural voices and the younger ones
became more anxious as to whether their new mourning was
becoming or not; but the master of the house was not sensible to
anything—the terrible tragedy had done its worst; Sir Ronald Alden
of Aldenmere lay in the clutches of fierce fever, battling for life.
The sympathy of the whole neighborhood was aroused. The
murder had been bad enough; but that it should also cause Sir
Ronald’s death was too terrible to contemplate.
Mrs. Severn remained to nurse her son-in-law; but after a time
his illness became too dangerous, and the doctors sent for two
trained nurses who could give the needful care to the sick man.
It was a close and terrible fight. Sir Ronald had naturally a strong
and magnificent constitution; it seemed as though he fought inch by
inch for his life. He was delirious, but it hardly seemed like the
ordinary delirium of fever; it was one long, incessant muttering, no
one could tell what, and just when the doctors were beginning to
despair and the nurses to grow weary of what seemed an almost
helpless task, Kenelm Eyrle came to the rescue. He took up his
abode at Aldenmere and devoted himself to Sir Ronald. His strength
and patience were both great; he was possessed of such intense
vitality himself, and such power of will, that he soon established a
marvelous influence over the patient.
For some days the contest seemed even—life and death were
equally balanced—Sir Ronald was weak as a feeble infant, but the
terrible brain fever was conquered, and the doctors gave a slight
hope of his recovery. Then it was that Kenelm’s help was invaluable;
his strong arm guided the feeble steps, his cheerful words roused
him, his strong will influenced him, and that Sir Ronald did recover,
after God, was owing to his friend.
When he was well enough to think of moving about, the doctors
strongly advised him to go away from the scene of the fatal tragedy.
“Take your friend to some cheerful place, Mr. Eyrle,” they said,
“where he can forget that his beautiful young wife was cruelly
murdered; whether he mentions the matter or not, it is now always in
his thoughts, his mind dwells on it constantly; take him anywhere
where it will cease to haunt him.”
Kenelm was quite willing.
“I must defer the great business of my life,” he said, “until Ronald
is himself again; then if the murderer be still on earth I will find him.
Thou hearest me, oh, my God—justice shall be done!”
Though outwardly he was cheerful and bright, seemingly
devoting all his energies to his friend, yet the one idea was fixed in
his mind as are the stars in heaven.
He had already spoken many times to Sergeant Hewson on the
subject, he had told him that he never intended to rest from his
labors until he found out who had done the deed.
“You will never rest, then, sir, while you live,” said the sergeant,
bluntly; “for I do not believe that it will ever be found out. I have had
to do with many queer cases in my life, but this, I am willing to own,
beats them all. I can see no light in it.”
“It will come to light sometime,” said Kenelm.
“Then it will be the work of God, Mr. Eyrle, and not of man,” was
the quiet rejoinder.
“What makes you despair about it?” asked Kenelm.
“There are features in this case different to any other. In most
crimes, especially of murder, there is a motive; I can see none in
this. There is revenge, greed, gain, robbery, baffled love, there is
always a ground for the crime.”
“There is none here?” interrupted Kenelm.
“No, sir, none; the poor lady was not robbed, therefore the motive
of greed, gain or dishonesty is not present. No one living gains
anything by her death, therefore no one could have any interest in
bringing it about. She is the only daughter of a mother who will never
get over her loss; the wife of a husband who is even now at death’s
door for her sake. Who could possibly desire her death? She never
appears to have made an enemy; her servants and dependents all
say of her that she was proud, but generous and lavish as a queen.”
“It is true,” said Kenelm Eyrle.
“I have known strange cases in my life,” continued Sergeant
Hewson, warming with his subject. “Strange and terrible. I have
known murder committed by ladies whom the world considers good
as they are fair——”
“Ladies!” interrupted Kenelm. “Ah! do not tell me that. Surely the
gentle hand of woman was never red in a crime so deep as that.”
Sergeant Hewson smiled as one who knows the secret of many
hearts.
“A woman, sir, when she is bad, is far worse than a man; when
they are good they are something akin to the angels; but there is no
woman in this case. I have looked far ahead. I am sure of it; there
was no rival with hot hate in her heart, no woman deceived and
abandoned for this lady’s sake, to have foul vengeance. I confess
myself baffled, for I can find no motive.”
Kenelm Eyrle looked perplexed.
“Nor, to tell you the truth, can I.”
“Do you think it possible that any tramp or beggar going through
the wood did it, and was disturbed before he had time to rob her?”
“No, I do not. However her death came to her, it was suddenly,
for she died, you know, with a smile on her lips. I have examined the
locality well, and in my opinion Lady Alden sat reading, never
thinking of coming harm, and the murderer stole up behind her and
did his deadly work before she ever knew that any one was near.
There was no horror of fright for her.”
“You heard what was said at the time of the inquest about the
weapon?”
“Yes; that is the clue. If ever the secret comes to light we shall
hear of that weapon again.”
“Then do you intend to give up the search?” asked Kenelm.
“I think so—if there was the least chance of success I should go
on with it—as it is, it is hopeless. I am simply living here in idleness,
taking Sir Ronald’s money and doing nothing for it. I have other and
more important work in hand.”
“Well,” said Mr. Eyrle, “if all the world gives it up I never shall.
What have you done toward it?”
“I have mastered every detail of the lady’s life. I know all her
friends. I have visited wherever she visited. I have exerted all the
capability and energy that I am possessed of, yet I have not
discovered one single circumstance that throws the least light on her
death.”
So Mr. Eyrle was forced to see the cleverest detective in England
leave the place without having been able to give the least
assistance.
“I will unravel it,” he said; “even were the mystery twenty times as
great. I will fathom it. But first I will devote myself to Ronald.”
It was August when they left Aldenmere. Sir Ronald would not go
abroad.
“I could not bear the sound of voices or the sight of faces,” he
said, appealingly. “If I am to have change, let us go to some quiet
Scotch village, where no one has ever heard my ill-fated name. If
recovery be possible it must be away from all these inquiries and
constant annoyance of visitors.”
Mr. Eyrle understood the frame of mind that made his friend
shrink from all observation.
“I must manage by degrees,” he thought. “First of all, he shall
have solitude and isolation, then cheerful society until he is himself
again—all for your sake, my lost love, my dear, dead darling—all
because he is the man you loved, and to whom you gave your
loving, innocent heart.”
When Kenelm Eyrle left Aldenmere, at the bottom of his traveling
trunk there was a small box containing the white rose he had taken
from Lady Alden’s dead hand.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RIVAL BEAUTIES.

The neighborhood of Leeholme was essentially an aristocratic


one; in fact, Leeholme calls itself a patrician country, and prides itself
on its freedom of all manufacturing towns. It is essentially devoted to
agriculture, and has rich pasture lands, fertile meadows and luxuriant
gardens.
The Aldens of Aldenmere were, perhaps, the oldest family of any.
Aldenmere was a magnificent estate; the grounds were more
extensive and beautiful than any other in the country. Nature had
done her utmost for them; art had not been neglected. The name
was derived from a large sheet of water formed by the river Lee—a
clear, broad, deep mere, always cool, shaded by large trees, with
water lilies lying on its bosom. The great beauty of the place was the
mere.
Holme Woods belonged to the estate; they bordered on the
pretty, picturesque village of Holme—the whole of which belonged to
the lords of Alden—quaint homesteads, fertile farms and broad
meadows, well-watered, surrounded the village. Not more than five
miles away was the stately and picturesque mansion of Mount
Severn, built on the summit of a green, sloping hill. Its late owner,
Charles Severn, Esq., had been one of the most eminent statesmen
who of late years had left a mark upon the times. He had served his
country well and faithfully; he had left a name honored by all who
knew it; he had done good in his generation, and when he died all
Europe lamented a truly great and famous man.
He had left only one daughter, Clarice Severn, afterward Lady
Alden, whose tragical death filled the whole country with gloom. His
widow, Mrs. Severn, had been a lady of great energy and activity;
but her life had been a very arduous one. She had shared in all her
husband’s political enterprises. She had shared his pains and his
joys. She had labored with her whole soul; and now that he was
dead she suffered from the reaction. Her only wish and desire was
for quiet and repose; the whole life of her life was centered on her
beautiful daughter.
Clarice Severn was but sixteen when her father died. His estate
was entailed, and at his widow’s death was to pass into possession
of his heir-at-law. But the gifted statesman had not neglected his only
child. He had saved a large fortune for her, and Clarice Severn was
known as a wealthy heiress.
She was also the belle and beauty par excellence of the country.
At all balls and fêtes she was queen. Her brilliant face, lighted by
smiles, her winning, haughty grace drawing all eyes, attracting all
attention. Wherever she was she reigned paramount. Other women,
even if more beautiful, paled into insignificance by her side.
She was very generous, giving with open, lavish hands. Proud in
so far as she had a very just appreciation of her own beauty, wealth
and importance. She was at times haughty to her equals, but to her
inferiors she was ever gentle and considerate, a quality which
afterward, when she came to reign at Aldenmere, made her beloved
and worshiped by all her servants.
She had faults, but the nature of the woman was essentially
noble. What those faults were and what they did for her will be seen
during the course of our story.
Mount Severn, even after the death of its accomplished master,
was a favorite place of resort. Mrs. Severn did not enjoy much of the
quiet she longed for. She would look at her daughter sometimes with
a smile, and say:
“It will always be the same until you are married, Clarice; then
people will visit you instead of me.”
So, little when she dreamed of the brilliant future awaiting that
beautiful and beloved child, did she dream of the tragedy that was to
cut that young life so terribly short.
Leeholme Park was the family seat of the Earl of Lorriston, a
quiet, easy, happy, prosperous gentleman, who had never known a
trouble or shadow of care in his whole life.
“People talk of trouble,” he was accustomed to say; “but I really
think half of it is their own making; of course there must be sickness
and death, but the world is a bright place in spite of that.”
He was married to the woman he loved; he had a son to succeed
him; his estates were large; his fortune vast; he had a young
daughter, who made the sunshine and light of his home. What had
he to trouble him? He had never known any kind of want, privation,
care or trouble; he had never suffered pain or heartache. No wonder
he looked around on those nearest and dearest, on his elegant
home, his attached friends, and wondered with a smile how people
could think the world dull or life dreary. Yet on this kindly, simple,
happy man a terrible blow was to fall.
I do not know who could properly describe Lady Hermione
Lorriston, the real heroine of our story. It seems to me easier to paint
the golden dawn of a summer morning, the transparent beauty of a
dewdrop, to put to music the song of the wind or the carol of a bird,
or the deep, solemn anthem of the waves, as to describe a character
that was full of light and shade, tender as a loving woman, playful as
a child, spiritual, poetical, romantic, a perfect queen of the fairies,
whose soul was steeped in poetry as flowers are in dew.
By no means a perfect woman, though endowed with woman’s
sweetest virtues; she was inclined to be willful, with a delicious grace
that no one could resist. She liked to have her own way, and
generally managed it in the end. She delighted rather too much in
this will of her own. She owned to herself, with meek, pretty
contrition, that she was often inclined to be passionate, that she was
impatient of control, too much inclined to speak her mind with a
certain freedom that was not always prudent.
Yet the worst of Lady Hermione’s faults was that they compelled
you to love her, and even to love them, they were so full of charms.
When she was quite a little child Lord Lorriston was accustomed to
say that the prettiest sight in all the world was Hermione in a
passion.
She was completely spoiled by her father, but, fortunately, Lady
Lorriston was gifted with some degree of common sense, and
exerted a wholesome control over the pet of the household.
The earl’s son and heir, Clement Dane Lorriston, was at college,
and Lady Hermione, having no sister of her own, was warmly
attached to Clarice Severn.
There were several other families—the Thrings of Thurston, the
Gordons of Leyton, and, as may be imagined, with so many young
people, there was no inconsiderable amount of love-making and
marriage.
Sir Ronald Alden was, without exception, the most popular man
in the neighborhood. The late Lord of Aldenmere had never married;
to save himself all trouble he adopted his nephew, Ronald, and
brought him up as his heir; so that when his time came to reign he
was among those with whom he had lived all his life.
He was very handsome, this young lord of Alden. The Alden
faces were all very much the same; they had a certain weary, half-
contemptuous look; but when they softened with tenderness or
brightened with smiles, they were simply beautiful and irresistible.
They were of the high-bred, patrician type—the style of face that
has come down to us from the cavaliers and crusaders of old. The
only way in which Sir Ronald differed from his ancestors was that he
had a mouth like one of the old Greek gods—it would of itself have
made a woman almost divinely lovely—it made him irresistible. Very
seldom does one see anything like it in real life. A smile from it would
have melted the coldest heart—a harsh word have pierced the heart
of one who loved him.
He had something of the spirit that distinguished the crusaders;
he was brave even to recklessness—he never studied danger; he
was proud, stubborn, passionate. A family failing of the Aldens was a
sudden impulse of anger that often led them to words they repented
of.
So that he was by no means perfect, this young lord of Alden; but
it is to be imagined that many people liked him all the better for that.

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