Crowdsourcing Without People: Modelling Clustering Algorithms as Experts

Abstract

This paper introduces mixsemble, an ensemble method that adapts the Dawid-Skene model to aggregate predictions from multiple model-based clustering algorithms. Unlike traditional crowdsourcing, which relies on human labels, the framework models the outputs of clustering algorithms as noisy annotations. Experiments on both simulated and real-world datasets show that, although the mixsemble is not always the single top performer, it consistently approaches the best result and avoids poor outcomes. This robustness makes it a practical alternative when the true data structure is unknown, especially for non-expert users.