Automatic Data Clustering by Hybrid Enhanced Firefly and Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithms

Data clustering is a process of arranging similar data in different groups based on certain characteristics and properties, and each group is considered as a cluster. In the last decades, several nature-inspired optimization algorithms proved to be efficient for several computing problems. Firefly algorithm is one of the nature-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithms regarded as an optimization tool for many optimization issues in many different areas such as clustering. To overcome the issues of velocity, the firefly algorithm can be integrated with the popular particle swarm optimization algorithm. In this paper, two modified firefly algorithms, namely the crazy firefly algorithm and variable step size firefly algorithm, are hybridized individually with a standard particle swarm optimization algorithm and applied in the domain of clustering. The results obtained by the two planned hybrid algorithms have been compared with the existing hybridized firefly particle swarm optimization algorithm utilizing ten UCI Machine Learning Repository datasets and eight Shape sets for performance evaluation. In addition to this, two clustering validity measures, Compact-separated and David–Bouldin, have been used for analyzing the efficiency of these algorithms. The experimental results show that the two proposed hybrid algorithms outperform the existing hybrid firefly particle swarm optimization algorithm.