Centronit: Initial Centroid Designation Algorithm for K-Means Clustering

Clustering performance of the K-means highly depends on the correctness of initial centroids. Usually initial centroids for the K- means clustering are determined randomly so that the determined initial centers may cause to reach the nearest local minima, not the global optimum. In this paper, we propose an algorithm, called as Centronit, for designation of initial centroid optimization of K-means clustering. The proposed algorithm is based on the calculation of the average distance of the nearest data inside region of the minimum distance. The initial centroids can be designated by the lowest average distance of each data. The minimum distance is set by calculating the average distance between the data. This method is also robust from outliers of data. The experimental results show effectiveness of the proposed method to improve the clustering results with the K-means clustering.