Cluster Analysis: Basic Concepts and Algorithms

8 Cluster 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. We provide some specific examples, organized by whether the purposeof the clustering is understanding or for UnderstandingClasses, or conceptually meaningful groupsof objects that share common characteristics, play an important role in howpeople analyze and describe the world. Indeed, human beings are skilled atdividing objects into groups (clustering) and assigning particular objects tothese groups (classification).

This chapter provides an introduction to cluster analysis. We begin with a high-level overview of clustering, including a discussion of the various ap-proaches to dividing objects into sets of clusters and the different types of clusters. We then describe three specific clustering techniques that represent.

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