Getting started with stream

The stream package provides tools to generate or read data streams, update stream mining models, and inspect their results. This guide walks through a small clustering workflow: create a stream, inspect incoming points, build a clustering model, and evaluate it on new points.

Installation

Install the released package from CRAN, then load it in your R session:

install.packages("stream")
library(stream)

Create and inspect a data stream

DSD_Gaussians() generates a stream with three clusters and a small amount of noise. A stream can be unbounded, so request a finite number of points with get_points():

stream <- DSD_Gaussians(k = 3, d = 2, noise = 0.05)
points <- get_points(stream, n = 5)
points
#>          X1        X2 .class
#> 1 0.5458535 0.6891478      1
#> 2 0.5751342 0.3031995      2
#> 3 0.5070179 0.2583102      2
#> 4 0.5436979 0.3234242      2
#> 5 0.6294917 0.2378384      2

The returned data frame contains feature columns and information columns such as .class, which records the generating cluster. Use info = FALSE when you only need feature values. Plot a sample of the stream to see its structure:

plot(stream, n = 500)

Update a clustering model

DSC_TwoStage() combines an online micro-clusterer with an offline macro-clusterer. Here, a sliding window stores recent points and k-means groups the window’s micro-clusters into three macro-clusters. update() feeds 500 points from the stream into the model:

clustering <- DSC_TwoStage(
  micro = DSC_Window(horizon = 100),
  macro = DSC_Kmeans(k = 3)
)

update(clustering, stream, n = 500)
clustering
#> Sliding window + k-Means (weighted) 
#> Class: DSC_TwoStage, DSC_Macro, DSC 
#> Number of micro-clusters: 100 
#> Number of macro-clusters: 3

Inspect the number of clusters and their centers, then plot the result:

nclusters(clustering, type = "micro")
#> [1] 100
nclusters(clustering, type = "macro")
#> [1] 3
get_centers(clustering, type = "macro")
#>          X1        X2
#> 1 0.9289433 0.2794326
#> 2 0.5328247 0.2655636
#> 3 0.5002698 0.7062714
plot(clustering, stream, type = "both")

Evaluate on new points

evaluate_static() tests the current model on new points without updating it. The generated stream includes true cluster labels, so external measures such as purity and the adjusted Rand index can be calculated:

evaluate_static(
  clustering,
  stream,
  measure = c("purity", "crand"),
  n = 200,
  type = "macro",
  assign = "macro"
)
#> Evaluation results for macro-clusters.
#> Points were assigned to macro-clusters.
#> 
#>    purity     cRand 
#> 0.9698455 0.9565454 
#> attr(,"type")
#> [1] "macro"
#> attr(,"assign")
#> [1] "macro"

Further reading

See the function reference and the package vignettes for details on data generators, stream filters, clustering methods, evaluation, and extending stream with new components.