R help - Sep 2006 - what does Height represent?

hi--

I am new to R and try to use R cluster my binary data. I use 
hierarchical clustering
plot (hclust
(dist(x,method="binary"),method="average"),cex=0.1)
I end up with a cluster Dendrogram. On the left of my dendrogram, there 
is scale called Height from 0.0 to 1.0.
I don't understand what does Height represent. If the Height represents 
the distance scale between two different data point,
it looks like if I add up the length of each branch, I end up with 
distance of some pairs > 1. It is not possible the distance
between any data point will greater than 1. Could some help me out?
 
Thanks


Zhaoshi

zhaoshi <zhaoshi <at> u.washington.edu> writes:
> 
> hi--
> 
> I am new to R and try to use R cluster my binary data. I use 
> hierarchical clustering
> plot (hclust
(dist(x,method="binary"),method="average"),cex=0.1)
> I end up with a cluster Dendrogram. On the left of my dendrogram, there 
> is scale called Height from 0.0 to 1.0.
> I don't understand what does Height represent. If the Height represents
> the distance scale between two different data point,
> it looks like if I add up the length of each branch, I end up with 
> distance of some pairs > 1. It is not possible the distance
> between any data point will greater than 1. Could some help me out?
Hi zhaoshi, please check the documentation for the function using ?hclust. You
may also want to look at a book that uses R/S-plus for cluster analysis.
Venables and Ripley's "Modern Applied Statistics with S-plus"
Chapter 11 may be
of some help. Anupam.