EVALUATION OF CLUSTER STABILITY WITH PERMUTATION SUBGROUPS

Abstract: This paper suggests a new methodology; using permutation subgroups to evaluate the stability of clusters. This could be any subgroup and the clustering solution can come from any clustering technique. Mainly, this paper shows how the proposed methodology can be performed through an example of using the rotational cyclic group. The example uses spatially connected clusters that are being created with agglomerative linkage methods. The proposed methodology is demonstrated on Swedish election data and is further evaluated using simulated data. In the example, the simulation results show that the suggested methodology tends to follow the theoretical reasoning of how stable a cluster should be, depending on clustering technique, size, and spatial connectivity. Lastly, further developments of the suggested methodology are presented, along with other possible applications.