Separation index and partial membership for clustering

  • Authors:
  • Weiliang Qiu;Harry Joe

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Statistics, University of British Columbia, 333-6356 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2;Department of Statistics, University of British Columbia, 333-6356 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2

  • Venue:
  • Computational Statistics & Data Analysis
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

We propose a new separation index that measures the magnitude of gaps between any two clusters in a partition, by projecting the data in a pair of clusters into a one-dimensional space in which they have the maximum separation. The resulting projections can also be used to determine partial membership for points near the boundaries between two or more clusters. The matrix of separation indexes is helpful in deciding whether too many or too few clusters are specified in the clustering method.