Dynamic clustering and strong patterns recognition: new tools in automatic classification

The dynamic clustering method (D.C.M.) developed by Diday is a nonhierarchical classification procedure which can help the geologist who is faced with the problem of forming groups among a multidimensional population of chemical analyses. Instead of computing the similarity between every possible pair of elements of a population, the D.C.M. suggests the use of a set of nuclei which will act as a template in the process of grouping elements together to form a partition of the population. By using the concept of similarity between an element and a group of elements, called a nucleus, the D.C.M. will assign a group number to every individual of the original population.When the first partition has been completed, the more representative elements of the groups are chosen and combined into an improved set of nuclei. This set will then be used to perform a second grouping and the whole process will be repeated over and over until no improvement can be achieved by an other iteration. The result is a local optimum...