[R] statistical significance test for cluster agreement

Alexander Sirotkin [at Yahoo] alex_s_42 at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 24 10:12:40 CET 2004


Like you said, such kind of test will not give me
anything that Rand index does not, except for p-value.

The null hypothesis, in my case, is that clustering
results does not match a different clustering, that
someone alse did on the same data.

And I do believe that this hypothesis is valid.
Basicly, it's not that different from chi-squared
goodness of fit test which check whether or not my 
data comes from particular distribution. With an 
exception that I don't know how to do chi-squared test
in this case :)



--- "Liaw, Andy" <andy_liaw at merck.com> wrote:
> But what would such a test do that the rand index
> does not?  Would you
> interpret the p-value from such a test, if exists,
> to have the meaning that
> a real test of hypothesis has?  AFAIK you basically
> need to have the
> hypotheses pinned down even before you see any data,
> for the inference to be
> valid.  Is that possible with clustering?
> 
> Just my $0.02...
> Andy
> 
> > From: Alexander Sirotkin [at Yahoo]
> > 
> > I was wondering, whether there is a way to have
> > statistical significance test for cluster
> agreement.
> > 
> > I know that I can use classAgreement() function to
> get
> > Rand index, which will give me some indication
> whether
> > the clusters agree or not, but it would be
> interesting
> > to have a formal test.
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > ______________________________________________
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> >
>
https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
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> > 
> 
> 
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