Patent ID: 8363961

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: generating a mode m of a set P including a plurality of data points defined within a multidimensional space, wherein generating said mode comprises: (a) for a point p selected from within set P, identifying a set S including a plurality of points within set P that neighbor point p according to a distance metric defined on the multidimensional space; (b) generating a centroid point c of set S, wherein centroid point c is a member of set S, and wherein generating the centroid point c of set S comprises: projecting each point in set S onto each of a plurality of vectors v within a set V; and selecting as centroid point c the point in S that minimizes a total difference, across all of the vectors v in V, between the projection of c onto each given vector v and the median of the projection of S onto the same given vector v; (c) determining whether a distance between the centroid point c and the point p satisfies a threshold value; (d) in response to determining that the distance between the centroid point c and the point p does satisfy the threshold value, returning centroid point c as a mode m of set P and terminating, or in response to determining that the distance between the centroid point c and the point p does not satisfy a threshold value, assigning centroid point c to point p and repeating (a) through (d); wherein each of (a) through (d) is implemented by one or more processors.