Cluster Analysis

Cluster analysis is a technique used for classification of data in which data elements are partitioned into groups called clusters that represent collections of data elements that are proximate based on a distance or dissimilarity function.

Cluster analysis is implemented as FindClusters[data] or FindClusters[data, n].

The Season 1 pilot (2005) and Season 2 episode "Dark Matter" of the television crime drama NUMB3RS feature clusters and cluster analysis. In "Dark Matter," math genius Charlie Eppes runs a cluster analysis to find connections between the students that seemed to be systematically singled out by the anomalous third shooter. In Season 4 episode"Black Swan," characters Charles Eppes and Amita Ramanujan adjust cluster radii in their attempt to do a time series analysis of overlapping Voronoi regions to track the movements of a suspect.

REFERENCES:

Kaufman, L. and Rousseeuw, P. J. Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis. New York: Wiley, 1990.

Rousseeuw, P. J. "Silhouettes: A Graphical Aid to the Interpretation and Validation of Cluster Analysis." J. Comput. Appl. Math. 20, 53-65, 1987.

Tibshirani, R.; Walther, G.; and Hastie, T. "Estimating the Number of Clusters in a Dataset Via the Gap Statistic." J. Royal Stat. Soc. B 63, 411-423, 2001.