Clustering unique datasets based on similarities (equality) - machine-learning

Question

I just entered into the space of data mining, machine learning and clustering. I'm having special problem, and do not know which technique to use it for solving it.
I want to perform clustering of observations (objects or whatever) on specific data format. All variables in each observation is numeric. My data input looks like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 3 5 7
2 9 10 11 12 13 14
45 1 22 23 24
Let's say that n represent row (observation, or 1D vector,..) and m represents column (variable index in each vector). n could be very large number, and 0 < m < 100. Also main point is that same observation (row) cannot have identical values (in 1st row, one value could appear only once).
So, I want to somehow perform clustering where I'll put observations in one cluster based on number of identical values which contain each row/observation.
If there are two rows like:
1
1 2 3 4 5
They should be clustered in same cluster, if there are no match than for sure not. Also number of each rows in one cluster should not go above 100.
Sick problem..? If not, just for info that I didn't mention time dimension. But let's skip that for now.
So, any directions from you guys,
Thanks and best regards,
JDK

Answer 1

Its hard to recommend anything since your problem is totally vague, and we have no information on the data. Data mining (and in particular explorative techniques like clustering) is all about understanding the data. So we cannot provide the ultimate answer.
Two things for you to consider:
1. if the data indicates presence of species or traits, Jaccard similarity (and other set based metrics) are worth a try.
2. if absence is less informative, maybe you should be mining association rules, not clusters
Either way, without understanding your data these numbers are as good as random numbers. You can easily cluster random numbers, and spend weeks to get the best useless result!

Answer 2

Can your problem be treated as a Bag-of-words model, where each article (observation row) has no more than 100 terms?
Anyway, I think your have to give more information and examples about "why" and "how" you want to cluster these data. For example, we have:
1 2 3
2 3 4
2 3 4 5
1 2 3 4
3 4 6
6 7 8
9 10
9 11
10 12 13 14
What is your expected clustering? How many clusters are there in this clustering? Only two clusters?
Before you give more information, according to you current description, I think you do not need a cluster algorithm, but a structure of connected components. The first round you process the dataset to get the information of connected components, and you need a second round to check each row belong to which connected components. Take the example above, first round:
1 2 3 : 1 <- 1, 1 <- 2, 1 <- 3 (all point linked to the smallest point to
represent they are belong to the same cluster of the smallest point)
2 3 4 : 2 <- 4 (2 and 3 have already linked to 1 which is <= 2, so they do
not need to change)
2 3 4 5 : 2 <- 5
1 2 3 4 : 1 <- 4 (in fact this change are not essential because we have
1 <- 2 <- 4, but change this can speed up the second round)
3 4 6 : 3 <- 6
6 7 8 : 6 <- 7, 6 <- 8
9 10 : 9 <- 9, 9 <- 10
9 11 : 9 <- 11
10 11 12 13 14 : 10 <- 12, 10 <- 13, 10 <- 14
Now we have a forest structure to represent the connected components of points. The second round you can easily pick up one point in each row (the smallest one is the best) and trace its root in the forest. The rows which have the same root are in the same, in your words, cluster. For example:
1 2 3 : 1 <- 1, cluster root 1
2 3 4 5 : 1 <- 1 <- 2, cluster root 1
6 7 8 : 1 <- 1 <- 3 <- 6, cluster root 1
9 10 : 9 <- 9, cluster root 9
10 11 12 13 14 : 9 <- 9 <- 10, cluster root 9
This process takes O(k) space where k is the number of points, and O(nm + nh) time, where r is the height of the forest structure, where r << m.
I am not sure if this is the result you want.