R help - Nov 2007 - Question about AGNES by Rousseeuw et al. in the package "cluster": How many clusters?

Dear all,

I am no stat wiz and I am just trying to use the AGNES algorithm at my
very modest level of statistical of understanding. I have difficulties
understanding the ouput from AGNES.  My question is: how to interpret
the output, especially how do you I know which cluster solution is the
best? In SPSS, an Agglomeration Schedule table is produced and I used to
look at the biggest jump between the error coefficients for each
agglomerative steps in order to find where to stop clustering. But with
the Agnes output I don't know what I should be looking at.

Thanks so much for your help,

Aude

Aude Plontz
Refugee Health Research Centre, Melbourne, Australia
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