Chapter 2: Hierarchical Clustering

Activity 2: Applying Linkage Criteria

Solution:

1. Visualize the x dataset that we created in Exercise 7, Building a Hierarchy:

   from scipy.cluster.hierarchy import linkage, dendrogram, fcluster
   from sklearn.datasets import make_blobs
   import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
   %matplotlib inline
   # Generate a random cluster dataset to experiment on. X = coordinate points, y = cluster labels (not needed)
   X, y = make_blobs(n_samples=1000, centers=8, n_features=2, random_state=800)
   # Visualize the data
   plt.scatter(X[:,0], X[:,1])
   plt.show()

   The output is as follows:

   Figure 2.20: A scatter plot of the generated cluster dataset

2. Create a list with all the possible linkage method hyperparameters:

   methods = ['centroid', 'single', 'complete', 'average', 'weighted']

3. Loop through each of the methods in the list that you just created and display the effect that they have on the same dataset:

   for method in methods...