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I recently read a fascinating article describing methods for clustering data without assuming a fixed number of clusters.

The article even includes some sample code, in a mix of Ruby, Python, and R. However, the meat of the analysis is performed using scikit-learn's Dirichlet Process Gaussian Mixture Model to actually find clusters in some sample data taken from McDonald's menu.

Obviously, this a a great excuse to learn some more python, but I'm lazy and would like to find a ready-made R package that can take a dataframe and return clusters, in a manner similar to the kmeans function. A quick search on CRAN reveals the packages dpmixsim and profdpm. Any suggestions for the best place to start?

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  • $\begingroup$ Also cran.r-project.org/web/packages/DPpackage which has Dirichlet process clustering I think, and cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bayesm has some DP stuff, don't remember what. $\endgroup$
    – scellus
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 16:11
  • $\begingroup$ Whoever voted down- could you please leave a comment? $\endgroup$
    – Zach
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 17:07
  • $\begingroup$ I am not the one who downvoted but I wanted to comment that one can simply add the number of clusters to the likelihood of the mixture distribution (often solved using E-M algorithm). It appears from your problem a Gaussian mixture model is assumed ( I don't know how the Dirichlet process fits in). There are some excellent books on mixture distributions. I recommend two by McLachlan. Finite Mixture Models (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics) [Hardcover] Geoffrey McLachlan (Author), David Peel (Author) and $\endgroup$
    – Michael R. Chernick
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 17:46
  • $\begingroup$ Mixture Models (Statistics: A Series of Textbooks and Monographs) [Hardcover] G. J. McLachlan (Author), K. E. Basford (Author) $\endgroup$
    – Michael R. Chernick
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 17:47
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    $\begingroup$ @Michael: maximum likelihood with a varying number of (gaussien) clusters — how do you make it not to overlearn, especially if the cluster width is a parameters as well? $\endgroup$
    – scellus
    Commented May 16, 2012 at 18:17

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I looked at this more carefully, and the package bayesm has rDPGibbs which does "Density Estimation with Dirichlet Process Prior and Normal Base", a kind of Dirichlet clustering. DPpackage has DPdensity which looks similar. I haven't tried these packages myself, so I have no idea how well they work in practice. Details such as parameterization of the normal base and the possibility to set hyperpriors for the DP parameter may be significant.

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  • $\begingroup$ DPpackage is orphaned on CRAN as of August 2019 it looks like $\endgroup$
    – alexpghayes
    Commented Dec 10, 2019 at 2:39

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