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A Comparison of Knee Strategies for Hierarchical Spatial Clustering

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Recent Trends and Future Technology in Applied Intelligence (IEA/AIE 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10868))

Abstract

A comparative study of the performance of knee detection approaches for the hierarchical clustering of 2D spatial data is undertaken. Knee detection is usually performed on the dendogram generated during cluster generation. For many problems, the knee is a natural indication of the ideal or optimal number of clusters for the given problem. This research compares the performance of various knee strategies on different spatial datasets. Two hierarchical clustering algorithms, single linkage and group average, are considered. Besides determining knees using conventional cluster distances, we also explore alternative metrics such as average global medoid and centroid distances, and F score metrics. Results show that knee determination is difficult and problem dependent.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2016-03653.

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Correspondence to Brian J. Ross .

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Ross, B.J. (2018). A Comparison of Knee Strategies for Hierarchical Spatial Clustering. In: Mouhoub, M., Sadaoui, S., Ait Mohamed, O., Ali, M. (eds) Recent Trends and Future Technology in Applied Intelligence. IEA/AIE 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10868. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92058-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92058-0_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92057-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92058-0

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