Clustering Sets of Objects Using Concepts-Objects Bipartite Graphs

In this paper we deal with data stated under the form of a binary relation between objects and properties. We propose an approach for clustering the objects and labeling them with characteristic subsets of properties. The approach is based on a parallel between formal concept analysis and graph clustering. The problem is made tricky due to the fact that generally there is no partitioning of the objects that can be associated with a partitioning of properties. Indeed a relevant partition of objects may exist, whereas it is not the case for properties. In order to obtain a conceptual clustering of the objects, we work with a bipartite graph relating objects with formal concepts. Experiments on artificial benchmarks and real examples show the effectiveness of the method, more particularly the fact that the results remain stable when an increasing number of properties are shared between objects of different clusters.