Beginner · Data
Agglomerative clustering
Visual diagram · (in preparation) · Math · (in preparation) · Worked example · 3 difficulty levels.
TL;DR. Agglomerative clustering is a bottom-up hierarchical clustering method that iteratively merges the closest clusters.
Technical Definition
Agglomerative clustering is a bottom-up hierarchical clustering method that iteratively merges the closest clusters.
How it works
Agglomerative clustering is a type of hierarchical clustering that starts with each data point as its own cluster. It then repeatedly merges the two closest clusters until a single cluster remains or a stopping criterion is met. This 'bottom-up' approach builds a hierarchy of clusters.
Related Concepts
- Clustering — An unsupervised technique that groups similar data points without using labels.
- Unsupervised Learning — Learning patterns from data that has no labels — only the inputs.
- Hierarchical clustering — An algorithm that creates a tree-like structure of nested clusters.