How to get gap statistic for hierarchical average clustering - r

Question

I perform a hierarchical cluster analysis based on 'average linkage' In base r, I use
dist_mat <- dist(cdata, method = "euclidean")
hclust_avg <- hclust(dist_mat, method = "average")
I want to calculate the gap statistics to decide optimal number of clusters. I use the 'cluster' library and the clusGap function. Since I can't pass the hclust solution nor specify average hiearchical clustering in the clusGap function, I use these lines:
cluster_fun <- function(x, k) list(cluster = cutree(hclust(dist(x, method = "euclidean"), method="average"), k = k))
gap_stat <- clusGap(cdata, FUN=cluster_fun, K.max=10, B=50)
print(gap_stat)
However, here I can't check the cluster solution. So, my question is - can I be sure that the gap statistic is calculated on the same solution as hclust_avg?
Is there a better way of doing this?

Answer 1

Yes it should be the same. In the clusGap function, it calls the cluster_fun for each k you provided, then calculates the pooled within cluster sum of squares around, as described in the paper
This is the bit of code called inside clusGap that calls your custom function:
W.k <- function(X, kk) {
clus <- if (kk > 1)
FUNcluster(X, kk, ...)$cluster
else rep.int(1L, nrow(X))
0.5 * sum(vapply(split(ii, clus), function(I) {
xs <- X[I, , drop = FALSE]
sum(dist(xs)^d.power/nrow(xs))
}, 0))
}
And from here, the gap statistics is calculated.
You can calculate the gap statistic using some custom code, but for the sake of reproducibility, etc, it might be easier to use this?

Answer 2

Thanhs for solving it. I must say this is good enough solution but you can try below given code as well.
# Gap Statistic for K means
def optimalK(data, nrefs=3, maxClusters=15):
"""
Calculates KMeans optimal K using Gap Statistic
Params:
data: ndarry of shape (n_samples, n_features)
nrefs: number of sample reference datasets to create
maxClusters: Maximum number of clusters to test for
Returns: (gaps, optimalK)
"""
gaps = np.zeros((len(range(1, maxClusters)),))
resultsdf = pd.DataFrame({'clusterCount':[], 'gap':[]})
for gap_index, k in enumerate(range(1, maxClusters)):
# Holder for reference dispersion results
refDisps = np.zeros(nrefs)
# For n references, generate random sample and perform kmeans getting resulting dispersion of each loop
for i in range(nrefs):
# Create new random reference set
randomReference = np.random.random_sample(size=data.shape)
# Fit to it
km = KMeans(k)
km.fit(randomReference)
refDisp = km.inertia_
refDisps[i] = refDisp
# Fit cluster to original data and create dispersion
km = KMeans(k)
km.fit(data)
origDisp = km.inertia_
# Calculate gap statistic
gap = np.log(np.mean(refDisps)) - np.log(origDisp)
# Assign this loop's gap statistic to gaps
gaps[gap_index] = gap
resultsdf = resultsdf.append({'clusterCount':k, 'gap':gap}, ignore_index=True)
return (gaps.argmax() + 1, resultsdf)
score_g, df = optimalK(cluster_df, nrefs=5, maxClusters=30)
plt.plot(df['clusterCount'], df['gap'], linestyle='--', marker='o', color='b');
plt.xlabel('K');
plt.ylabel('Gap Statistic');
plt.title('Gap Statistic vs. K');