MustaCHE: a multiple clustering hierarchies explorer

AbstractIn this demonstration paper we introduce MustaCHE (Multiple Clustering Hierarchies Explorer), a tool that allows analysis and exploration of multiple clustering hierarchies in an interactive and visual manner. A known issue in the context of density-based clustering is how to set parameters. Typically one has to resort to trial-and-error, and its potential pitfalls, which may possibly include not finding existing clusters at all. In a previous work we have devised a very efficient technique to generate clustering hierarchies using HDBSCAN* w.r.t. a range of its clustering parameter, mpts. However, finding the "best" mpts value is still an open problem. In order to mitigate this issue we developed MustaCHE, a tool that allows a user to visualize several different density-based cluster hierarchies of a dataset w.r.t. a large range of mpts values. The user can then explore hierarchies individually and, at the same time, see how they compare to the other hierarchies. The simultaneous visualization of multiple clustering hierarchies provided by MustaCHE makes it feasible (and easy) for a user to gain a deeper understanding of the data and how its cluster structures behave under different parameter settings.