Customer Reviews

Cluster Analysis

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Here is an excellent introduction to cluster analysis. The concepts are explained in clear language, with many illustrative examples. It is possibly the best of the introductory level books. I give it 4 stars because of a few misprints, and a few places where some essential information or detail has been omitted that can lead to misunderstanding.

The book covered pretty extensively what's going on in the field of cluster analysis. It's a good reference book, but not the best in terms of teaching me the logic underlying various decisions in cluster analysis.

I'm a frequent user of SPSS software, including cluster analysis, and I found that I couldn't get good definitions of all the options available. I chose this book because I jotted down the terms that were poorly described in SPSS help, and then looked them up in the index of this book in the book description. I found several, so I bought the book.

I was pleased with the result. It put cluster in a much broader context than SPSS classes or user's guides do. It talks about techniques that SPSS can't do. If obviously goes into greater detail including more than a few formulas, but it reads fairly well. I still don't think that more than a handful of the folks I work with in need this much detail, and a serious practitioner might need even more. Kachigan's chapter on this topic would be more relevant to a wide audience. Multivariate Statistical Analysis: A Conceptual Introduction

Note that you won't find any explicit references except for an appendix which lists stats software and the related cluster features. This part is quite out of date. There are no SPSS pictures or examples. Still, if you want the whole story, this is a fine choice.

I own acopy of the second edition of presumably the same book published in 1980. But its author is Brian Everitt alone and it has 132 pages. Obviously, the current edition discusses the more recent developments in Clustering Analysis and it has two more co-authors. So I might miss on newer definitions, but I have to say that the author's explanation of the then available methods in the old edition is of excellent quality.