The problem of `cluster analysis' or of `finding groups in data' is ill defined. So there can be no universal solution and any claimed solution must necessarily solve some other suitably constrained problem and not the more general one.
What we need instead are highly interactive tools which allow us to adapt to the peculiarities of the data and the problem at hand.
These tools are usefully organized and integrated if we step back and consider the problem as one of exploratory data analysis, except that now, in addition to the data itself, the exploration is to take place as well on the space of partitions of the data.
Existing algorithms need to be recast, and new ones developed, in terms of exploring the space of partitions. The algorithms can then be easily integrated with other interactive tools so that jointly they provide a broadly useful and easily adapted tool-set for finding and identifying groups in data.
Argument:
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