kneed
Knee-point detection in Python
This repository is an attempt to implement the kneedle algorithm, published here. Given a set of x
and y
values, kneed
will return the knee point of the function. The knee point is the point of maximum curvature.
Installation
To install use:
conda:
$ conda install -c conda-forge kneed
pip:
$ pip install kneed
Or clone the repo:
$ git clone https://github.com/arvkevi/kneed.git
$ python setup.py install
Tested with Python 3.5 and 3.6
Usage
This reproduces Figure 2 from the manuscript.
x
and y
must be equal length arrays.
DataGenerator
has functions to generate sample datasets.
from kneed import DataGenerator, KneeLocator
x, y = DataGenerator.figure2()
print([round(i, 3) for i in x])
print([round(i, 3) for i in y])
[0.0, 0.111, 0.222, 0.333, 0.444, 0.556, 0.667, 0.778, 0.889, 1.0]
[-5.0, 0.263, 1.897, 2.692, 3.163, 3.475, 3.696, 3.861, 3.989, 4.091]
Instantiating KneeLocator
with x
, y
and the appropriate curve
and direction
will find the knee (or elbow) point.
Here, kneedle.knee
stores the knee point of the curve.
kneedle = KneeLocator(x, y, S=1.0, curve='concave', direction='increasing')
print(round(kneedle.knee, 3))
0.222
# .elbow can also be used to access point of maximum curvature
print(round(kneedle.elbow, 3))
0.222
The KneeLocator
class also has some plotting functions for quick visualization of the curve (blue), the distance curve (red) and the knee (dashed line, if present)
kneedle.plot_knee_normalized()
Average Knee from 5000 NoisyGaussians when mu=50 and sigma=10
import numpy as np
knees = []
for i in range(5000):
x,y = DataGenerator.noisy_gaussian(mu=50, sigma=10, N=1000)
kneedle = KneeLocator(x, y, curve='concave', direction='increasing')
knees.append(kneedle.knee)
np.mean(knees)
60.921051806064931
Application
Find the optimal number of clusters (k) to use in k-means clustering.
See the tutorial in the notebooks folder, this can be achieved with the direction
keyword argument:
KneeLocator(x, y, curve='convex', direction='decreasing')
Contributing
Contributions are welcome, if you have suggestions or would like to make improvements please submit an issue or pull request.
Citation
Finding a “Kneedle” in a Haystack: Detecting Knee Points in System Behavior Ville Satopa † , Jeannie Albrecht† , David Irwin‡ , and Barath Raghavan§ †Williams College, Williamstown, MA ‡University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA § International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA