Re: [Clusterviz-devel] Re: Impending release of version 0.2

[Jonas M. <na...@us...>]

Dear Karsten,

On Sunday 12 March 2006 21:11, K. Weinert wrote:
> Hello Jonas,
>
> the code in the RC 0.2 branch seems to work fine. Set it free!
>
> Considering the numerical problems in the higher-dimensional case in the
> soft-k-means algorithm, I'm afraid I cannot contribute anything. Can you
> point me to a paper or textbook describing the algorithm? I'm interested
> in learning about it...

If you can get your hands onto "Information Theory, Inference and Learning 
Algorithms" by David J.C. MacKay, take a look at it! This is the book that we 
read in a university course. I think it is quite nice read - I even bought it 
myself. It is also mentioned in our CREDITS file.

Chapter 20 details the k-means algorithm. Soft k-means is in 20.2 and what we 
call mixture models in out implementation is found in 22.3 as "Enhancements 
to soft K-Means". The problems that we run into are detailed in 22.4 "A fatal 
flaw of maximum likelihood".

Regards, Jonas.