Clustering Algorithm for Paper Boys

Question

I need help selecting or creating a clustering algorithm according to certain criteria.

Imagine you are managing newspaper delivery persons.

• You have a set

Answer 1

I think you want a hierarchical agglomeration technique rather than k-means. If you get your algorithm right you can stop it when you have the right number of clusters. As someone else mentioned you can seed subsequent clusterings with previous solutions which may give you a siginificant performance improvement.

You may want to look closely at the distance function you use, especially if your problem has high dimension. Euclidean distance is the easiest to understand but may not be the best, look at alternatives such as Mahalanobis.

I'm presuming that your real problem has nothing to do with delivering newspapers...