Interactive Exploration of Large Dendrograms with Prototypes

Hierarchical clustering is one of the standard methods taught for identifying and exploring the underlying structures that may be present within a dataset. Students are shown examples in which the dendrogram, a visual representation of the hierarchical clustering, reveals a clear clustering structure. However, in practice, data analysts today frequently encounter datasets whose large scale undermines the usefulness of the dendrogram as a visualization tool. Densely packed branches obscure structure, and overlapping labels are impossible to read. In this article we present a new workflow for performing hierarchical clustering via the R package called protoshiny that aims to restore hierarchical clustering to its former role of being an effective and versatile visualization tool. Our proposal leverages interactivity combined with the ability to label internal nodes in a dendrogram with a representative data point (called a prototype). After presenting the workflow, we provide three case studies to demonstrate its utility.