scipy.cluster.hierarchy.single#

scipy.cluster.hierarchy.single(y)[source]#

Perform single/min/nearest linkage on the condensed distance matrix y.

Parameters

yndarray: The upper triangular of the distance matrix. The result of pdist is returned in this form.

Returns

Zndarray: The linkage matrix.

See also

linkage: for advanced creation of hierarchical clusterings.
scipy.spatial.distance.pdist: pairwise distance metrics

Examples

>>> from scipy.cluster.hierarchy import single, fcluster
>>> from scipy.spatial.distance import pdist

First, we need a toy dataset to play with:

x x    x x
x        x

x        x
x x    x x

>>> X = [[0, 0], [0, 1], [1, 0],
...      [0, 4], [0, 3], [1, 4],
...      [4, 0], [3, 0], [4, 1],
...      [4, 4], [3, 4], [4, 3]]

Then, we get a condensed distance matrix from this dataset:

>>> y = pdist(X)

Finally, we can perform the clustering:

>>> Z = single(y)
>>> Z
array([[ 0.,  1.,  1.,  2.],
       [ 2., 12.,  1.,  3.],
       [ 3.,  4.,  1.,  2.],
       [ 5., 14.,  1.,  3.],
       [ 6.,  7.,  1.,  2.],
       [ 8., 16.,  1.,  3.],
       [ 9., 10.,  1.,  2.],
       [11., 18.,  1.,  3.],
       [13., 15.,  2.,  6.],
       [17., 20.,  2.,  9.],
       [19., 21.,  2., 12.]])

The linkage matrix Z represents a dendrogram - see scipy.cluster.hierarchy.linkage for a detailed explanation of its contents.

We can use scipy.cluster.hierarchy.fcluster to see to which cluster each initial point would belong given a distance threshold:

>>> fcluster(Z, 0.9, criterion='distance')
array([ 7,  8,  9, 10, 11, 12,  4,  5,  6,  1,  2,  3], dtype=int32)
>>> fcluster(Z, 1, criterion='distance')
array([3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1], dtype=int32)
>>> fcluster(Z, 2, criterion='distance')
array([1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1], dtype=int32)

Also, scipy.cluster.hierarchy.dendrogram can be used to generate a plot of the dendrogram.