DIVA : A variance-based clustering approach for multi-type relational data

In contrast to classical propositional approaches that only focus on simple and flat datasets, relational clustering can handle multi-type interrelated data objects directly and adopt semantic information hidden in the linkage structure to improve the clustering result. However, exploring linkage information will greatly reduce the scalability of relational clustering.

Moreover, some characteristics of vector data space utilized to accelerate the propositional clustering procedure are no longer valid in relational data space. These two disadvantages restrain the relational clustering techniques from being applied to very large datasets or in time-critical tasks, such as online recommender systems. In this paper we propose a new variance-based clustering algorithm to address the above difficulties.