Hi Rick Thank you so much for your detailed explanation. It makes much sense now. May I ask another question? If I want to use the Hierarchical clustering to find the best number of clusters, and then set it as the K into the K-means cluster. Which method would you recommend finding the best number in this case? Shall I use several methods, such as "centroid, single, average, ward", to get the best number from the figure of "criteria for the number of clusters" respectively? And then, choose the number appeared at the most time as the K number. For example, the best number for single method is : 3, 8 , 11 For centroid method is: 3, 6,12 For average method is : 3, 5, 11 , 13 For ward method is: 10 In conclusion, 3 will be the best number of clusters. Looking forward to your reply. Thanks
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