How to visualize binary data? - matlab

Question

I have a dataset 6x1000 of binary data (6 data points, 1000 boolean dimensions).
I perform cluster analysis on it
[idx, ctrs] = kmeans(x, 3, 'distance', 'hamming');
And I get the three clusters. How can I visualize my result?
I have 6 rows of data each having 1000 attributes; 3 of them should be alike or similar in a way. Applying clustering will reveal the clusters. Since I know the number of clusters
I only need to find similar rows. Hamming distance tell us the similarity between rows and the result is correct that there are 3 clusters.
[EDIT: for any reasonable data, kmeans will always finds asked number
of clusters]
I want to take that knowledge
and make it easily observable and understandable without having to write huge explanations.
Matlab's example is not suitable since it deals with numerical 2D data while my questions concerns n-dimensional categorical data.
The dataset is here http://pastebin.com/cEWJfrAR
[EDIT1: how to check if clusters are significant?]
For more information please visit the following link:
https://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/32090/discussion-between-oleg-komarov-and-justcurious
If the question is not clear ask, for anything you are missing.

Answer 1

For representing the differences between high-dimensional vectors or clusters, I have used Matlab's dendrogram function. For instance, after loading your dataset into the matrix x I ran the following code:
l = linkage(a, 'average');
dendrogram(l);
and got the following plot:
The height of the bar that connects two groups of nodes represents the average distance between members of those two groups. In this case it looks like (5 and 6), (1 and 2), and (3 and 4) are clustered.
If you would rather use the hamming distance rather than the euclidian distance (which linkage does by default), then you can just do
l = linkage(x, 'average', {'hamming'});
although it makes little difference to the plot.

Answer 2

You can start by visualizing your data with a 'barcode' plot and then labeling rows with the cluster group they belong:
% Create figure
figure('pos',[100,300,640,150])
% Calculate patch xy coordinates
[r,c] = find(A);
Y = bsxfun(#minus,r,[.5,-.5,-.5, .5])';
X = bsxfun(#minus,c,[.5, .5,-.5,-.5])';
% plot patch
patch(X,Y,ones(size(X)),'EdgeColor','none','FaceColor','k');
% Set axis prop
set(gca,'pos',[0.05,0.05,.9,.9],'ylim',[0.5 6.5],'xlim',[0.5 1000.5],'xtick',[],'ytick',1:6,'ydir','reverse')
% Cluster
c = kmeans(A,3,'distance','hamming');
% Add lateral labeling of the clusters
nc = numel(c);
h = text(repmat(1010,nc,1),1:nc,reshape(sprintf('%3d',c),3,numel(c))');
cmap = hsv(max(c));
set(h,{'Background'},num2cell(cmap(c,:),2))

Answer 3

Definition
The Hamming distance for binary strings a and b the Hamming distance is equal to the number of ones (population count) in a XOR b (see Hamming distance).
Solution
Since you have six data strings, so you could create a 6 by 6 matrix filled with the Hamming distance. The matrix would be symetric (distance from a to b is the same as distance from b to a) and the diagonal is 0 (distance for a to itself is nul).
For example, the Hamming distance between your first and second string is:
hamming_dist12 = sum(xor(x(1,:),x(2,:)));
Loop that and fill your matrix:
hamming_dist = zeros(6);
for i=1:6,
for j=1:6,
hamming_dist(i,j) = sum(xor(x(i,:),x(j,:)));
end
end
(And yes this code is a redundant given the symmetry and zero diagonal, but the computation is minimal and optimizing not worth the effort).
Print your matrix as a spreadsheet in text format, and let the reader find which data string is similar to which.
This does not use your "kmeans" approach, but your added description regarding the problem helped shaping this out-of-the-box answer. I hope it helps.
Results
0 182 481 495 490 500
182 0 479 489 492 488
481 479 0 180 497 517
495 489 180 0 503 515
490 492 497 503 0 174
500 488 517 515 174 0
Edit 1:
How to read the table? The table is a simple distance table. Each row and each column represent a series of data (herein a binary string). The value at the intersection of row 1 and column 2 is the Hamming distance between string 1 and string 2, which is 182. The distance between string 1 and 2 is the same as between string 2 and 1, this is why the matrix is symmetric.
Data analysis
Three clusters can readily be identified: 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6, whose Hamming distance are, respectively, 182, 180, and 174.
Within a cluster, the data has ~18% dissimilarity. By contrast, data not part of a cluster has ~50% dissimilarity (which is random given binary data).

Answer 4

Presentation
I recommend Kohonen network or similar technique to present your data in, say, 2 dimensions. In general this area is called Dimensionality reduction.
I you can also go simpler way, e.g. Principal Component Analysis, but there's no quarantee you can effectively remove 9998 dimensions :P
scikit-learn is a good Python package to get you started, similar exist in matlab, java, ect. I can assure you it's rather easy to implement some of these algorithms yourself.
Concerns
I have a concern over your data set though. 6 data points is really a small number. moreover your attributes seem boolean at first glance, if that's the case, manhattan distance if what you should use. I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) Hamming distance only makes sense if your attributes are somehow related, e.g. if attributes are actually a 1000-bit long binary string rather than 1000 independent 1-bit attributes.
Moreover, with 6 data points, you have only 2 ** 6 combinations, that means 936 out of 1000 attributes you have are either truly redundant or indistinguishable from redundant.
K-means almost always finds as many clusters as you ask for. To test significance of your clusters, run K-means several times with different initial conditions and check if you get same clusters. If you get different clusters every time or even from time to time, you cannot really trust your result.

Answer 5

I used a barcode type visualization for my data. The code which was posted here earlier by Oleg was too heavy for my solution (image files were over 500 kb) so I used image() to make the figures
function barcode(A)
B = (A+1)*2;
image(B);
colormap flag;
set(gca,'Ydir','Normal')
axis([0 size(B,2) 0 size(B,1)]);
ax = gca;
ax.TickDir = 'out'
end