Finding Groups in Data: An Introduction to Cluster Analysis

Rating:
Summary: Very good comparison of cluster methods - coded in SPlus.
Review: I enjoyed the close comparison and some of the evaluations of the competing clustering methods. Particularly informative were the discussions of the underlying data distribution assumptions. It also was of even more use because the implementation of the algorithms has been accomplished in S-Plus (MathSoft - 12/98->v.4 ). Later chapters look at some of the model-based statistics which are thus made available to the biostatistic community. The book is particularly useful to make understandable the assumptions which can be applied to larger datasets. Such datasets are prevalent in bioinformatics, from microarray and PCR analyses -- such as P. Brown's and Somogyi's work. Tools to implement the algorithms in this book make it valuable since S-Plus is available to the academic community. Tremendously powerful understanding with this pairing of academic treatment and industrial-strength modelling software!!!

Rating:
Summary: But where is the software?
Review: This book describes the algorithms and usage of various software programs written by the authors. Frustratingly, they aren't included and rather too much space is devoted to describing the input and output of the various programs. An analogy might be a book about painting techniques which described the techniques but failed to include any pictures. Where's the CD-ROM? The publishers need to re-think this book. The world has changed since it was first published.

Rating:
Summary: Needs an update
Review: This book is well written, and it can be a useful reference for several standard clustering procedures. The software code (on paper only) is very out of date, and essentially useless. The algorithms have been implemented in Splus (and also in R), and since the documentation in Splus is really inadequate, this text should be considered the documentation.

I hope the authors will write a second edition, and include software, examples, and data on a companion disk. The quality of writing is very good, and there are a few things in this book that I cannot find in any other reference.