Having a non-standard problm of clustering, I'm making an "ad-hoc"
procedure in R but would like my object to be a list like
the one produced by hclust. I have a doubt regarding component
merge:
While the meaning of the negative elements is clear, I'm
confused about the next sentence in the hclust help page:
"If j is positive then the merge was with the cluster formed at the
(earlier) stage j of the algorithm"
As an example, I've made:
> hc <- hclust(dist(USArrests[1:10,]), "ave")
> hc$merge
[,1] [,2]
[1,] -1 -8
[2,] -3 -5
[3,] -6 -10
[4,] -4 3
[5,] 1 4
[6,] -2 2
[7,] -9 6
[8,] 5 7
[9,] -7 8
And would like to confirm:
Row [4,] means: element 4 merges with cluster made
by elements 6 and 10
Row [5,] means: cluster made by elements 1 and 8 merges
with cluster made by elements 6,10 and 3
Is this right? Am I understanding correctly?
Thanks
Agus
Agustin Lobo
Institut de Ciencies de la Terra "Jaume Almera" (CSIC)
LLuis Sole Sabaris s/n
08028 Barcelona
Spain
Tel. 34 934095410
Fax. 34 934110012
email: Agustin.Lobo at ija.csic.es
http://www.ija.csic.es/gt/obster