Clustering Techniques
Objectives
By the end, you'll be able to:
- Distinguish the main families of clustering methods.
- Choose between hierarchical, partition-based, probabilistic, and density-based clustering.
- Prepare data for clustering and assess cluster quality critically.
Concepts Covered
- Hierarchical clustering and dendrograms
- K-means and K-medoids
- Gaussian mixtures and the EM algorithm
- DBSCAN and OPTICS
- Choosing the number of clusters
- Practical tips for scaling, visualization, and validation