Classification ascendante hiérarchique

Domaine

Vocabulaire

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Définition

In data mining and statistics, hierarchical clustering (also called hierarchical cluster analysis or HCA) is a method of cluster analysis which seeks to build a hierarchy of clusters. Strategies for hierarchical clustering generally fall into two types:[1]

• Agglomerative: This is a "bottom-up" approach: each observation starts in its own cluster, and pairs of clusters are merged as one moves up the hierarchy.
• Divisive: This is a "top-down" approach: all observations start in one cluster, and splits are performed recursively as one moves down the hierarchy.

In general, the merges and splits are determined in a greedy manner. The results of hierarchical clustering are usually presented in a dendrogram.