Patent ID: 7308451

Claim:
A method for clustering a plurality of items, each of the items including information, the method comprising: inputting a plurality of items, each of the items including information, into a clustering process; inputting an initial organization structure into the clustering process, the initial organization structure including one or more categories, a first one of the items being associated with at least one of the categories of the initial organization structure; processing, using at least processing hardware, the plurality of items in at least the clustering process, the clustering process being based in part upon the initial organization structure and in part upon the information in each of the items, the clustering process being biased toward the categories of the initial organization structure, wherein the processing comprises determining a likeness level between a first item and a second item, the likeness level being defined such that the likeness level between two items is increased to the extent that both of the two items are associated with a same one or more of the categories of the initial organization structure, and wherein determining the likeness level between the first item and the second item comprises: associating a first feature vector with the first item and a second feature vector with the second item, each feature vector representing information included in the corresponding item; adding a first additional feature to each of the first feature vector and the second feature vector, the first additional feature representing a first category of the initial organization structure, the first additional feature in the first feature vector corresponding to a degree to which the first item is similar to one or more items associated with the first category of the initial organization structure, the first additional feature in the second feature vector corresponding to a degree to which the second item is similar to one or more items associated with the first category of the initial organization structure; and calculating a degree of similarity of the first item and the second item including calculating a similarity measure between the first additional feature in the first feature vector and the second feature vector; automatically determining, using at least the processing hardware, a resulting organization structure based upon the processing of the plurality of items, the resulting organization structure comprising at least a portion of the initial organization structure and a modification to at least one of the categories of the initial organization structure such that an association of a first one of the items to at least one of the categories of the resulting organization structure is different from an association of the first one of the items to at least one of the categories of the initial organization structure; and storing the resulting organization structure in memory.