Agglomerative (Hierarchical Clustering)

Why would you use Hierarchical Clustering?

To visualize cluster structures using a dendrogram

What is a limitation of using Hierarchical Clustering?

It can be computationally intensive, so it's not ideal for very large datasets

Initialization

Treat each data point as a single cluster

Compute Distance

Calculate distances between cluster pairs

Merge Clusters

Merge the two closest clusters into one

Update Distance Matrix

Update the distance matrix to reflect the distance between the new cluster and the original clusters

Repeat

Repeat steps 2–4 until all data points are merged into one cluster

Dendrogram

A dendrogram, or a tree diagram, is used to visualize the process of clustering