Component Selection for the Metro Visualisation of the Self-Organising Map

Abstract

Self-Organising Maps have been used for a wide range of clustering applications. They are well-suited for various visualisation techniques to offer better insight into the clustered data sets. A particularly feasible visualisation is the plotting of single components of a data set and their distribution across the SOM. One central problem of the visualisation of Component Planes is that a single plot is needed for each component; this understandably leads to problems with higher-dimensional data. We therefore build on the Metro Visualisation for Self-Organising Maps which integrates the idea of Component Planes into one illustration. Higher-dimensional data sets still pose problems in terms of overloaded visualisations - component selection and aggregation techniques are highly desirable. We therefore propose and compare two methods, one for the aggregation of correlated components, one for the selection of the components most feasible for visualisation for a given clustering.