I have a dissimilarity measure for pairwise comparison of my subjects and want to perform hierarchical cluster analysis with complete linkage.
The dissimilarity measure is not a distance metric. It does satisfy the following properties:
- d(X,Y) = large negative number, when X = Y
- d(X,Y) becomes larger when X is less 'similar' to Y
- d(X,Y) = d(Y,X), the dissimilarity matrix is symmetric.
So compared to a distance metric, only the 'symmetry' requirement is satisfied.
Are the above three properties nevertheless sufficient for hierarhcical clustering with complete linkage?
I have tried to run hclust in R with as distance matrix my matrix with pariwise dissimilarity measures and it seemed to work fine.
If one can provide me with a reference that contains the answer that would be great!