Hierarchical Clustering in Python: Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

Learn How to Use Hierarchical Clustering to Analyze and Visualize Complex Data Sets in Python

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Introduction

Clustering is a great technique for discovering hidden patterns inside a dataset. The k-Means algorithm is one of the clustering algorithms that exist, but there’s another algorithm that has more powerful capabilities, which is hierarchical clustering.

This article will show you the overview of hierarchical clustering, from the concepts and the techniques that we can use. After that, we will have a hands-on tutorial using Python and libraries like scikit-learn and SciPy.

We will use scikit-learn to generate the clusters along with the hierarchies and the SciPy library for generating the dendrogram.

Without further ado, let’s get started!

Concepts

Hierarchical Clustering

So, what is hierarchical clustering? Hierarchical clustering is a clustering method, but at the same time, this method tries to build hierarchies of clusters.

So rather than having a group of isolated clusters, this method will show the relationships between those…