Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts and Algorithms

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8Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts andAlgorithmsCluster analysis divides data into groups (clusters) that are meaningful, useful,or both. If meaningful groups are the goal, then the clusters should capture thenatural structure of the data. In some cases, however, Cluster analysis is only auseful starting point for other purposes, such as data summarization. Whetherfor understanding or utility, Cluster analysis has long played an importantrole in a wide variety of fields: psychology and other social sciences, biology,statistics, pattern recognition, information retrieval, machine learning, anddata have been many applications of Cluster analysis to practical prob-lems.

492 Chapter 8 Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts and Algorithms or unnested, or in more traditional terminology, hierarchical or partitional. A partitional clustering is simply a division of the set of data objects into non-overlapping subsets (clusters) such that each data object is …

  Division, Cluster, Algorithm