partition.object           package:cluster           R Documentation

Partitioning Object

Description:

     The objects of class '"partition"' represent a partitioning of a
     dataset into clusters.

Value:

     a '"partition"' object is a list with the following (and typically
     more) components: 

clustering: the clustering vector.  An integer vector of length n, the
          number of observations, giving for each observation the
          number (`id') of the cluster to which it belongs.

    call: the matched 'call' generating the object.

 silinfo: a list with all _silhouette_ information, only available when
          the number of clusters is non-trivial, i.e., 1 < k < n and
          then has the following components, see 'silhouette'

          widths an (n x 3) matrix, as returned by 'silhouette()', with
               for each observation i the cluster to which i belongs,
               as well as the neighbor cluster of i (the cluster, not
               containing i, for which the average dissimilarity
               between its observations and i is minimal), and the
               silhouette width s(i) of the observation.

          clus.avg.widths the average silhouette width per cluster.

          avg.width the average silhouette width for the dataset, i.e.,
               simply the average of s(i) over all observations i.

          This information is also needed to construct a _silhouette
          plot_ of the clustering, see 'plot.partition'.

          Note that 'avg.width' can be maximized over different
          clusterings (e.g. with varying number of clusters) to choose
          an _optimal_ clustering. 

objective: value of criterion maximized during the partitioning
          algorithm, may more than one entry for different stages.

    diss: an object of class '"dissimilarity"', representing the total
          dissimilarity matrix of the dataset (or relevant subset, e.g.
          for 'clara'). 

    data: a matrix containing the original or standardized data.  This
          might be missing to save memory or when a dissimilarity
          matrix was given as input structure to the clustering method. 

GENERATION:

     These objects are returned from 'pam', 'clara' or 'fanny'.

METHODS:

     The '"partition"' class has a method for the following generic
     functions: 'plot', 'clusplot'.

INHERITANCE:

     The following classes inherit from class '"partition"' : '"pam"',
     '"clara"' and '"fanny"'.

     See 'pam.object', 'clara.object' and 'fanny.object' for details.

See Also:

     'pam', 'clara', 'fanny'.

