Symbolic Cluster Analysis for Distribution Valued Dissimilarity
Yusuke Matsui, Hiroyuki Minami, Masahiro Misuta · Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods · 2014
We propose a novel hierarchical clustering for distribution valued dissimilarities. Analysis of large and complex data has attracted significant interest. Symbolic Data Analysis (SDA) was proposed by Diday in 1980’s, which provides a new framework for statistical analysis. In SDA, we analyze an object with internal variation, including an interval, a histogram and a distribution, called a symbolic object. In the study, we focus on a cluster analysis for distribution valued dissimilarities, one of the symbolic objects. A hierarchical clustering has two steps in general: find out step and update step. In the find out step, we find the nearest pair of clusters. We extend it for distribution valued dissimilarities, introducing a measure on their order relations. In the update step, dissimilarities between clusters are redefined by mixture of distributions with a mixing ratio. We show an actual example of the proposed method and a simulation study.