Onset of a conceptual outline map to get a hold on the jungle of cluster analysis

Abstract

The domain of cluster analysis is a meeting point for a very rich multidisciplinary encounter, with cluster-analytic methods being studied and developed in discrete mathematics, numerical analysis, statistics, data analysis, data science, and computer science (including machine learning, data mining, and knowledge discovery), to name but a few. The other side of the coin, however, is that the domain suffers from a major accessibility problem as well as from the fact that it is rife with division across many pretty isolated islands. As a way out, the present paper offers a thorough and in-depth review of the clustering domain as a whole under the form of an outline map based on an overarching conceptual framework and a common language. With this framework we wish to contribute to structuring the clustering domain, to characterizing methods that have often been developed and studied in quite different contexts, to identifying links between methods, and to introducing a frame of reference for optimally setting up cluster analyses in data-analytic practice.