A benchmark study on time series clustering

Abstract

This paper presents the first time series clustering benchmark utilizing all time series datasets currently available in the University of California Riverside (UCR) archive — the state of the art repository of time series data. Specifically, the benchmark examines eight popular clustering methods representing three categories of clustering algorithms (partitional, hierarchical and density-based) and three types of distance measures (Euclidean, dynamic time warping, and shape-based), while adhering to six restrictions on datasets and methods to make the comparison as unbiased as possible. A phased evaluation approach was then designed for summarizing dataset-level assessment metrics and discussing the results. The benchmark study presented can be a useful reference for the research community on its own; and the dataset-level assessment metrics reported may be used for designing evaluation frameworks to answer different research questions.

Keywords

• Time series
• Clustering
• Benchmark
• UCR archive