A comprehensive survey of traditional, merge-split and evolutionary approaches proposed for determination of cluster number

Today's data mostly does not include the knowledge of cluster number. Therefore, it is not possible to use conventional clustering approaches to partition today's data, i.e., it is necessary to use the approaches that automatically determine the cluster number or cluster structure. Although there has been a considerable attempt to analyze and categorize clustering algorithms, it is difficult to find a survey paper in the literature that has thoroughly focused on the determination of cluster number. This significant issue motivates us to introduce concepts and review methods related to automatic cluster evolution from a theoretical perspective in this study. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.