MCDMCluster Number Selection
Elbow Method
The Elbow Method is a heuristic for selecting the optimal number of clusters in partitional clustering. Introduced by Robert Thorndike in 1953, it involves fitting clustering models for increasing numbers of clusters and plotting the within-cluster sum of squares (WCSS) against the number of clusters. The 'elbow' occurs where the rate of WCSS decrease sharply changes, suggesting an optimal cluster count.
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Sources
- Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R., & Friedman, J. (2009). The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction. Springer Series in Statistics. link ↗
- Thorndike, R. L. (1953). Who belongs in the family? Psychometrika, 18(4), 267-276. DOI: 10.1007/BF02289263 ↗