VAT: a tool for visual assessment of (cluster) tendency

TLDR

The paper introduces a method for visually assessing the cluster tendency of a set of objects. The method represents objects as vectors or pairwise dissimilarities, reorders them, and displays the reordered dissimilarity matrix as an intensity image. Clusters appear as dark blocks of pixels along the diagonal of the intensity image. No additional metadata provided.

Abstract

A method is given for visually assessing the cluster tendency of a set of Objects O = {o/sub 1/, . . . ,o/sub n/} when they are represented either as object vectors or by numerical pairwise dissimilarity values. The objects are reordered and the reordered matrix of pair wise object dissimilarities is displayed as an intensity image. Clusters are indicated by dark blocks of pixels along the diagonal.