Everything to know about Hierarchical Clustering, Agglomerative Clustering & Divisive Clustering

Chandra Prakash Bathula

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Jun 25, 2023

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Hierarchical Clustering

Hierarchical Clustering:

• Since we have already learned “ K- Means” as a popular clustering algorithm.
• The other popular clustering algorithm is “Hierarchical clustering”.

Before we go on to its applications & benefits.To remember we have two types of “Hierarchical Clustering”. They are :

1. Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (Typically Most Popular) and

2. Divisive Hierarchical clustering.

Let’s get some understanding about these two types and what they actually mean. So that we will get an idea of the hierarchical part of the hierarchical clustering.

=> Let’s start with an example.

Suppose, we have a bunch of points. The way Agglomerative works is as follows:

• First, it assumes every point as a cluster itself.
• Later it clusters a near point and groups them to 2 point cluster.
• Next, it will continue for the near point and group them.
• Ideally, it reaches to two clusters as a whole.
• As the bounding case it reaches to a single one-large cluster at the end.