A Survey of the Literature of Cluster Analysis

Classification and clustering has become an increasingly popular method of multivariate analysis over the past two decades, and with it has come a vast amount of published material. Since there is no journal devoted exclusively to cluster analysis as a general topic and since it has been used in many fields of study, the novice user is faced with the daunting prospect of searching through a multitude of journals for appropriate references. In order to organize this diverse and voluminous material the following points will be considered: the terminology associated with cluster analysis; the fields of study in which the techniques have been practised; the published books; the journals containing the most significant papers; the broad nature of the published papers and a list of the computer packages available for performing a cluster analysis. An exhaustive list of books is given but a comprehensive list of papers is not included, mainly because these are provided by the books cited and by Cormack's 1971 review. Finally, a few thoughts on the state of the literature of cluster analysis are given.