English

Weakest link pruning of a dendrogram

Methodology 2023-01-20 v3

Abstract

Hierarchical clustering is a popular method for identifying distinct groups in a dataset. The most commonly used method for pruning a dendrogram is via a single horizontal cut. In this paper, we propose a new technique "weakest link optimal pruning". We prove its superiority over horizontal pruning and provide some examples illustrating how the two methods can behave quite differently.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.05367,
  title  = {Weakest link pruning of a dendrogram},
  author = {Jiacheng Ge and Robert Tibshirani},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.05367},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:29:15.186Z