Silhouettes: a graphical aid to the interpretation and validation of cluster analysis

A new graphical display is proposed for partitioning techniques. Each cluster is represented by a so-called silhouette, which is based on the comparison of its tightness and separation. This silhouette shows which objects lie well within their cluster, and which ones are merely somewhere in between clusters. The entire clustering is displayed by combining the silhouettes into a single plot, allowing an appreciation of the relative quality of the clusters and an overview of the data configuration. The average silhouette width provides an evaluation of clustering validity, and might be used to select an ‘appropriate’ number of clusters.

• Publication year

  1987

• Venue

  Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics

• Publication date

  1987-11-01

• Fields of study

  Mathematics, Computer Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/0377-0427(87)90125-7
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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