Hierarchical 4 4 03
Hierarchical 4 4 03
Agglomerative methods:
• Start with partition Pn, where each object forms its own cluster.
• Merge the two closest clusters, obtaining Pn-1.
• Repeat merge until only one cluster is left.
Divisive methods
• Start with P1.
• Split the collection into two clusters that are as homogenous (and as
different from each other) as possible.
• Apply splitting procedure recursively to the clusters.
Note:
Agglomerative methods require a rule to decide which clusters to
merge.
Typically one defines a distance between clusters and then merges
the two clusters that are closest.
RSS ( Pk ) x j x Pi
i 1 j Pi
2
RSS ( P , Q) x i x P x j xQ
2
i P j Q
Note:
• Each step reduces RSS(P, Q)
• No guarantee to find optimal partition.
Divisive version of average linkage
Algorithm Diana, Struyf, Hubert, and Rousseuw, pp. 22
4.3 Dendograms
Result of hierarchical clustering can be represented as binary tree:
• Root of tree represents entire collection
• Terminal nodes represent observations
• Each interior node represents a cluster
• Each subtree represents a partition
Note: The tree defines many more partitions than the n-2 nontrivial
ones constructed during the merge (or split) process.
Note: For HAC methods, the merge order defines a sequence of n
subtrees of the full tree. For HDC methods a sequence of subtrees can
be defined if there is a figure of merit for each split.
If distance between daughter clusters is monotonically increasing as
we move up the tree, we can draw dendogram:
y-coordinate of vertex = distance between daughter clusters.
2.5
4
2.5
2.0
2.0
1.5
x[,2]
1.5
4
1.0
1.0
0.5
2
0.5
0.0
1
1
2
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
x[,1]
Standard method to extract clusters from a dendogram:
• Pick number of clusters k.
• Cut dendogram at a level that results in k subtrees.
4.4 Experiment
Try hierarchical method on unimodal 2D datasets.
Experiments suggest: