Solving non-uniqueness in agglomerative hierarchical clustering using multidendrograms

DOI10.1007/S00357-008-9004-XMaRDI QIDQ734362zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Alberto Fernández, Sergio Gomez

Publication date 13 October 2009

Published in Journal of Classification (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0608049

zbMATH Keywords

cluster analysishierarchical classificationagglomerative methodsLance and Williams formulaties in proximities

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Classification and discrimination; cluster analysis (statistical aspects) (62H30)

Abstract: In agglomerative hierarchical clustering, pair-group methods suffer from a problem of non-uniqueness when two or more distances between different clusters coincide during the amalgamation process. The traditional approach for solving this drawback has been to take any arbitrary criterion in order to break ties between distances, which results in different hierarchical classifications depending on the criterion followed. In this article we propose a variable-group algorithm that consists in grouping more than two clusters at the same time when ties occur. We give a tree representation for the results of the algorithm, which we call a multidendrogram, as well as a generalization of the Lance and Williams' formula which enables the implementation of the algorithm in a recursive way.

Recommendations

• Non-uniqueness and Inversions in Cluster Analysis
• Hierarchical subtrees agglomerative clustering algorithms
• A new approach to isotonic agglomerative hierarchical clustering
• Piecewise hierarchical clustering
• Publication:4721426

Cites work

• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1348600 (Why is no real title available?)
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3448387 (Why is no real title available?)
• Hierarchical clustering via joint between-within distances: extending Ward's minimum variance method
• Non-uniqueness and Inversions in Cluster Analysis

Cited in

(8)

• Hierarchical clustering with optimal transport
• Comparison of the data classification approaches to diagnose spinal cord injury
• Multidimensional scaling analysis of the dynamics of a country economy
• Strategies and evolution in the minority game: a multi-round strategy experiment
• Non-uniqueness and Inversions in Cluster Analysis
• Versatile linkage: a family of space-conserving strategies for agglomerative hierarchical clustering
• Modified multidimensional scaling approach to analyze financial markets
• A novel scale-invariant, dynamic method for hierarchical clustering of data affected by measurement uncertainty

This page was built for publication: Solving non-uniqueness in agglomerative hierarchical clustering using multidendrograms

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q734362)