Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering

Abstract

Clustering is a task of assigning a set of objects into groups called clusters. In data mining, hierarchical clustering is a method of cluster analysis which seeks to build a hierarchy of clusters. Strategies for hierarchical clustering generally fall into two types:Agglomerative: This is a "bottom up" approach: each observation starts in its own cluster, and pairs of clusters are merged as one moves up the hierarchy.Divisive: This is a "top down" approach: all observations start in one cluster, and splits are performed recursively as one moves down the hierarchy.