DIVCLUS-T: A monothetic divisive hierarchical clustering method

  • Authors:
  • Marie Chavent;Yves Lechevallier;Olivier Briant

  • Affiliations:
  • IMB, UMR CNRS 5251, Université Bordeaux1, 351 cours de la libération, 33405 Talence, Cedex, France;INRIA-Rocquencourt, 78153 Le Chesnay, Cedex, France;G-SCOP, ENSGI-INPG, 6 avenue Félix-Viallet, 38031 Grenoble, France

  • Venue:
  • Computational Statistics & Data Analysis
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

DIVCLUS-T is a divisive hierarchical clustering algorithm based on a monothetic bipartitional approach allowing the dendrogram of the hierarchy to be read as a decision tree. It is designed for either numerical or categorical data. Like the Ward agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm and the k-means partitioning algorithm, it is based on the minimization of the inertia criterion. However, unlike Ward and k-means, it provides a simple and natural interpretation of the clusters. The price paid by construction in terms of inertia by DIVCLUS-T for this additional interpretation is studied by applying the three algorithms on six databases from the UCI Machine Learning repository.