Hierarchical clustering
Statistical method of analysis which seeks to build a hierarchy of clusters / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In data mining and statistics, hierarchical clustering (also called hierarchical cluster analysis or HCA) is a method of cluster analysis that seeks to build a hierarchy of clusters. Strategies for hierarchical clustering generally fall into two categories:
- Agglomerative: This is a "bottom-up" approach: Each observation starts in its own cluster, and pairs of clusters are merged as one moves up the hierarchy.
- Divisive: This is a "top-down" approach: All observations start in one cluster, and splits are performed recursively as one moves down the hierarchy.
In general, the merges and splits are determined in a greedy manner. The results of hierarchical clustering[1] are usually presented in a dendrogram.
Hierarchical clustering has the distinct advantage that any valid measure of distance can be used. In fact, the observations themselves are not required: all that is used is a matrix of distances. On the other hand, except for the special case of single-linkage distance, none of the algorithms (except exhaustive search in ) can be guaranteed to find the optimum solution.