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I have a dataset with 3 variables: A, B and C. Now, A and B are ordinal variables (i.e.; the result of two questions measured using a 5-point Likert), whereas B is continuous.

A and B are also correlated, Spearman rho = .50, p-value = 0.0046

I want to partition my dataset in 3 cluster using kmeans (the default R implementation). Does the fact that some of the variables in my dataset are correlated violates any assumptions for running the algorithm?

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  • $\begingroup$ No, k-means does not require uncorrelated variables. It, however, assumes that clusters in the data are convex and more or less spherical. $\endgroup$ – ttnphns Aug 18 '14 at 15:25
  • $\begingroup$ See also identical question stats.stackexchange.com/q/244149/3277 $\endgroup$ – ttnphns Nov 4 '16 at 14:12
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Removing correlations is a best practise (whitening), but not required.

Non-continuous variables however tend to yield bad results with k-means, even after whitening. Due to the clearly cut gaps in non-continuous data, these gaps tend to dominate the k-means clustering result much more than any structure in continuous attributes.

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  • $\begingroup$ Does this hold if the variables are normalised? $\endgroup$ – dfucci Aug 21 '14 at 11:09
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    $\begingroup$ They will still only have a low finite number of different values, won't they? It does not matter if the gap between values is always exactly 1, or if it is smaller. Adding appropriate random jitter, and running the process multiple times, may help. Or inflating your data: adding 10+ copies of each data point to your data set; then adding different random jitter to each copy. $\endgroup$ – Has QUIT--Anony-Mousse Aug 21 '14 at 13:40

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