The importance of scale

Cluster Analysis in R

Dmitriy (Dima) Gorenshteyn

Lead Data Scientist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Distance between individuals

$$height_{scaled} = \frac{height - mean(height)}{sd(height)}$$

print(height_weight)

  Height Weight
1      6    200
2      6    202
3      8    200
...   ...    ...

scale(height_weight)

   Height   Weight
1    0.60    0.67
2    0.60    0.73
3    11.3    0.67
...   ...    ...

Cluster Analysis in R