What is the main purpose of using the silhouette coefficient in clustering?
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the main purpose of using the silhouette coefficient in clustering?
To measure the distance between clusters
To evaluate the compactness and separation of clusters
To determine the number of clusters
To visualize the clusters
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the main purpose of using the silhouette coefficient in clustering?
Step 1: Understand that clustering is a way to group similar items together.
Step 2: Know that we want to see how well these groups (clusters) are formed.
Step 3: Learn that the silhouette coefficient is a number that helps us measure the quality of these clusters.
Step 4: Realize that the silhouette coefficient looks at two things: how close items in the same cluster are to each other (compactness) and how far apart different clusters are from each other (separation).
Step 5: Understand that a higher silhouette coefficient means better-defined clusters, while a lower one indicates that the clusters may not be well-formed.