Data Mining

8

Hierarchical Clustering

Hierarchical clustering produces groups of similar data points at different levels of similarity. This chapter introduces a bottom-up procedure of hierarchical clustering, called agglomerative hierarchical clustering. A list of software packages that support hierarchical clustering is provided. Some applications of hierarchical clustering are given with references.

8.1    Procedure of Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering

Given a number of data records in a data set, the agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm produces clusters of similar data records in the following steps:

1.  Start with clusters, each of which has one data record.

2.  Merge the two closest clusters to form a new cluster that replaces ...