Interactive Exploration of Large Dendrograms with Prototypes

TL;DR

This paper introduces protoshiny, an interactive R package that enhances the visualization of large dendrograms by labeling internal nodes with prototypes, making hierarchical clustering more accessible for large datasets.

Contribution

The paper presents a new interactive workflow and R package that improve the visualization and interpretability of large hierarchical clustering dendrograms.

Findings

Enhanced visualization of large dendrograms with prototypes.

Improved interpretability of hierarchical clustering results.

Case studies demonstrating practical utility.

Abstract

Hierarchical clustering is one of the standard methods taught for identifying and exploring the underlying structures that may be present within a data set. Students are shown examples in which the dendrogram, a visual representation of the hierarchical clustering, reveals a clear clustering structure. However, in practice, data analysts today frequently encounter data sets whose large scale undermines the usefulness of the dendrogram as a visualization tool. Densely packed branches obscure structure, and overlapping labels are impossible to read. In this paper we present a new workflow for performing hierarchical clustering via the R package called protoshiny that aims to restore hierarchical clustering to its former role of being an effective and versatile visualization tool. Our proposal leverages interactivity combined with the ability to label internal nodes in a dendrogram with a representative data point (called a prototype). After presenting the workflow, we provide three case studies to demonstrate its utility.