This algorithm is claimed to cope with the local optima problem
of the simple and fast-kmedoids algorithm (fastkmed). The
m argument is defined by the user and has to be \(1 < m \leq n\).
The m is a hostility measure computed by
$$m_i = \sum_{X_j \in Y} r_{ij}$$
where \(x_j\) is the object j, Y is the set of objects
as many as m, and \(r_{ij}\) is the rank distance, i.e. sorted
distance, between object i and j.
init can be provided with a vector of id objects. The length of
the vector has to be equal to the number of clusters. However, assigning
a vector in the init argument, the algorithm is no longer the rank
k-medoids algorithm.
References
Zadegan, S.M.R, Mirzaie M, and Sadoughi, F. 2013. Ranked k-medoids: A fast and
accurate rank-based partitioning algorithm for clustering large datasets. Knowledge-Based
Systems 39, 133-143.