Application of single-linkage clustering method in the analysis of growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) At 1990 Constant Basic Prices (Million Naira)

Abstract

Single-linkage is one of the methods in cluster analysis, which is used, for determining natural groupings in multi-variate data. Given a data set with one or more characteristics, singlelinkage system classifies the data into clusters so that they are as similar as possible within each cluster and as different as possible between clusters. The objective is to show the closeness or similarity in the growth rate of GDP. Using the MINITAB software the similarity of the growth rate of GDP and the similarity in the years of production were shown.

KEYWORDS: Dendrogram, tree-diagram, nearest neighbour, single-linkage clustering, hierarchical clustering