Granted Patent B2

US 7,809,727 · App. 11/964,000 · Granted Oct 5, 2010

Abstract

Claims (78)

1. A system for clustering unstructured documents, comprising:

a selection module that selects documents having terms with frequencies of occurrence of the terms that satisfy upper edge conditions less than 100% and lower edge conditions greater than 0% from a set of documents;

a concept module that generates concepts based on one or more of the terms for the selected documents; and

a cluster module that groups the selected documents into clusters, comprising:

an evaluation module that evaluates a weight for each of the clusters;

a determination module that determines, for each of the selected documents, inner products of that selected document and each cluster from the frequencies of occurrence for at least one of the terms from the concepts and the cluster weights; and

an assignment module that assigns each selected document into one such cluster based on the inner products of the selected document; and

a processor to execute each of the modules, which are stored on a computer-readable storage medium.

2. A system according to claim 1 , wherein each cluster corresponds to terms from one or more concepts.

3. A system according to claim 1 , further comprising:

a threshold module that determines the upper and lower edge conditions based on types of the selected documents.

4. A system according to claim 1 , further comprising:

a change module that changes one such cluster, wherein the change comprises an addition or deletion of a document; and

an update module that updates the cluster to determine a best fit for the selected documents.

5. A system according to claim 1 , wherein each inner product is calculated as a distance for each selected document.

6. A system according to claim 5 , wherein the distance is calculated according to the equation comprising:

d

cluster

=

∑

i

->

n

⁢

⁢

doc

term

i

·

cluster

term

i

where doc term represents the frequency of occurrence for a given concept in each selected document and cluster term represents the weight for each cluster.

7. A system according to claim 1 , further comprising:

a threshold module that determines the upper and lower edge conditions, comprising:

a median value module that selects a median value by mapping the terms based on the frequencies of occurrence; and

a calculation module that establishes the upper and lower edge conditions as functions of the median value.

8. A system according to claim 1 , further comprising:

a cluster creation module that creates the clusters.

9. A computer-implemented method for clustering unstructured documents, comprising the steps of:

selecting documents having terms with frequencies of occurrence of the terms that satisfy upper edge conditions less than 100% and lower edge conditions greater than 0% from a set of documents;

generating concepts based on one or more of the terms for the selected documents; and

grouping the selected documents into clusters, comprising:

evaluating a weight for each of the clusters;

determining, for each of the selected documents, inner products of that selected document and each cluster from the frequencies of occurrence for at least one of the terms from the concepts and the cluster weights; and

assigning each selected document into one such cluster based on the inner products of the selected document,

wherein all the steps are performed on a suitably programmed computer.

10. A method according to claim 9 , wherein each cluster corresponds to terms from one or more concepts.

11. A method according to claim 9 , further comprising:

determining the upper and lower edge conditions based on types of the selected documents.

12. A method according to claim 9 , further comprising:

changing one such cluster, wherein the change comprises an addition or deletion of a document; and

updating the cluster to determine a best fit for the selected documents.

13. A method according to claim 9 , wherein each inner product is calculated as a distance for each selected document.

14. A method according to claim 13 , wherein the distance is calculated according to the equation comprising:

d

cluster

=

∑

i

->

n

⁢

⁢

doc

term

i

·

cluster

term

i

where doc term represents the frequency of occurrence for a given concept in each selected document and cluster term represents the weight for each cluster.

15. A method according to claim 9 , further comprising:

creating the clusters.

16. A method according to claim 9 , further comprising:

determining the upper and lower edge conditions, comprising:

selecting a median value by mapping the terms based on the frequencies of occurrence; and

establishing the upper and lower edge conditions as functions of the median value.

Assignments (9)