Network representation for evolution of clusters and groups

Abstract

An example method includes receiving a data set, each data point in the data set being associated with an indication of time, and a distance function, determining overlapping intervals over a time period range, identifying subsets of data in each overlapping interval based on the indications of time, applying the distance function to each subset of data to identify groups, constructing a node for each group to create a plurality of nodes, determining if two nodes of the plurality of nodes in adjacent time periods are connected by scoring shared data point membership between the two nodes and comparing a score of the shared data point membership to a threshold, and displaying at least two nodes with an indication of time, the two nodes being connected by a line based on the comparison of the score and the threshold.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A non-transitory computer readable medium including executable instructions, the instructions being executable by a processor to perform a method, the method comprising:
 receiving a data set, each data point in the data set being associated with an indication of time, and a distance function to be utilized on the data points of the data set;   determining overlapping intervals over a time period range;   identifying subsets of data in each overlapping interval based, at least in part, on the indications of time;   applying the distance function to each subset of data to identify groups;   constructing a node for each group to create a plurality of nodes;   determining if two nodes of the plurality of nodes in adjacent time periods are connected by scoring shared data point membership between the two nodes of the plurality of nodes and comparing a score of the shared data point membership to a threshold; and   displaying at least two nodes of the plurality of nodes with an indication of a passage of time, the two nodes being connected by a line based on the comparison of the score of the shared data point membership between the two nodes of the plurality of nodes to the threshold.