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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-363?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12855061#action_12855061
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Shannon Quinn commented on MAHOUT-363:
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I apologize for that. I actually only changed some of the wording; the overall
proposal structure wasn't changed. But I will certainly refrain from editing
the ticket itself.
Are there any other suggestions for making the proposal more viable?
> Proposal for GSoC 2010 (EigenCuts clustering algorithm for Mahout)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: MAHOUT-363
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-363
> Project: Mahout
> Issue Type: Task
> Reporter: Shannon Quinn
>
> Proposal Title: EigenCuts spectral clustering implementation on map/reduce
> for Apache Mahout (addresses issue Mahout-328)
> Student Name: Shannon Quinn
> Student E-mail: mag...@gmail.com
> Organization/Project:Assigned Mentor:
> Proposal Abstract:
> Clustering algorithms are advantageous when the number of classes are not
> known a priori. However, most techniques still require an explicit K to be
> chosen, and most spectral algorithms' use of piecewise constant approximation
> of eigenvectors breaks down when the clusters are tightly coupled.
> EigenCuts[1] solves both these problems by choosing an eigenvector to create
> a new cluster boundary and iterating until no more edges are cut.
> Detailed Description
> Clustering techniques are extremely useful unsupervised methods, particularly
> within my field of computational biology, for situations where the number
> (and often the characteristics as well) of classes expressed in the data are
> not known a priori. K-means is a classic technique which, given some K,
> attempts to label data points within a cluster as a function of their
> distance (e.g. Euclidean) from the cluster's mean, iterating to convergence.
> Another approach is spectral clustering, which models the data as a weighted,
> undirected graph in some n-dimensional space, and creates a matrix M of
> transition probabilities between nodes. By computing the eigenvalues and
> eigenvectors of this matrix, most spectral clustering techniques take
> advantage of the fact that, for data with loosely coupled clusters, the K
> leading eigenvectors will identify the roughly piecewise constant regions in
> the data that correspond to clusters.
> However, these techniques all suffer from drawbacks, the two most significant
> of which are having to choose an arbitrary K a priori, and in the situation
> of tightly coupled clusters where the piecewise constant approximation on the
> eigenvectors no longer holds.
> The EigenCuts algorithm addresses both these issues. As a type of spectral
> clustering algorithm it works by constructing a Markov chain representation
> of the data and computing the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the transition
> matrix. Eigenflows, or flow of probability by eigenvector, have an associated
> half life of flow decay called eigenflow. By perturbing the weights between
> nodes, it can be observed where bottlenecks exist in the eigenflow's
> halflife, allowing for the identification of boundaries between clusters.
> Thus, this algorithm iterates until no more cuts between clusters need to be
> made, eliminating the need for an a prior K, and conferring the ability to
> separate tightly coupled clusters.
> The only disadvantage of EigenCuts is the need to recompute eigenvectors and
> eigenvalues at each iterative step, incurring a large computational overhead.
> This problem can be adequately addressed within the map/reduce framework and
> on a Hadoop cluster by parallelizing the computation of each eigenvector and
> its associated eigenvalue. Apache Hama in particular, with its
> specializations in graph and matrix data, will be crucial in parallelizing
> the computations of transition matrices and their corresponding eigenvalues
> and eigenvectors at each iteration.
> Since Dr Chennubhotla is currently a member of the faculty at the University
> of Pittsburgh, I have been in contact with him for the past few weeks, and we
> both envision and eagerly anticipate continued collaboration over the course
> of the summer and this project's implementation. His guidance in highlighting
> the finer points of the underlying theory, coupled with my experience in and
> knowledge of software engineering, makes this is a project we are both
> extremely excited about implementing.
> Timeline
> At the end of each sprint, there should be a concrete, functional
> deliverable. It may not do much, but what it does will work and have full
> coverage accompanying unit tests.
> Sprint 0 (April 26 - May 23): Work with mentor on any pre-coding tasks -
> familiarization with and dev deployments of Hadoop and Mahout; reading up on
> documentation, fine-tuning the project plan and requirements. This part will
> kick into high gear after May 6 (my last final exam and final academic
> obligation, prior to the actual graduation ceremony), but likely nothing
> before April 29 (the day of my thesis defense).
> Sprint 1 (2 weeks; May 24 - June 6): Implement basic k-means clustering
> algorithm and parallelize on Mahout over Hadoop. Preliminary interface allows
> for dataset selection and visualization of resulting clusters.
> Sprint 2 (3 weeks; June 7 - 27): Modify k-means algorithm to spectral
> clustering. Integrate map/reduce framework via Mahout and take advantage of
> existing core calculation of transition matrices and associated eigenvectors
> and eigenvalues.
> Sprint 3 (3 weeks; June 28 - July 18): Augment spectral clustering to
> EigenCuts. Fully parallelize with Mahout. Also, mid-term evaluations.
> Sprint 4 (3 weeks; July 19 - August 8): Fix any remaining issues with
> EigenCuts. Finalize interface for running the algorithm, selecting datasets
> and visualizing results.
> Sprint 5 (1 week; August 9 - 15): Tidy up documentation, write final unit
> tests, fix outstanding bugs.
> Other Information
> I am finishing up my last semester as a master's student in computational
> biology at Carnegie Mellon, prior to beginning the PhD program in CompBio at
> Carnegie Mellon this coming fall. I have worked extensively with clustering
> techniques as a master's student, as a significant amount of my work has
> involved bioimage analysis within Dr Robert Murphy's lab. Previous work has
> involved using HMMs to detect patterns in tuberculosis genomes and use
> CLUSTALW to cluster those patterns according to geographic location. My
> master's thesis involves use of matrix completion to infer linear
> transformations of proteins and their associated subcellular locations across
> varying cell conditions (drugs, cell lines, etc).
> I unfortunately have limited experience with Apache Mahout and Hadoop, but
> with an undergraduate computer science degree from Georgia Tech, and after an
> internship with IBM ExtremeBlue, I feel I am extremely adept at picking up
> new frameworks quickly.
> References
> [1] Chakra Chennubhotla and Allan D. Jepson. Half-Lives of EigenFlows for
> Spectral Clustering. NIPS 2002.
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