Question 1

The most commonly used measure of similarity is the _ or its square.

Accepted Answer

A)   city- block distance
B)   Chebychev's distance
C)   Manhattan distance
D)   euclidean distance D

Question 2

Which method allows the researcher to obtain information on cluster membership of cases if the number of clusters is specified?

Accepted Answer

A)   factor loading plot
B)   scattergram
C)   scree plot
D)   icicle plot D

Question 3

Which of the following is not a disadvantage of nonhierarchical clustering procedures?

Accepted Answer

A)   The selection of cluster centers is arbitrary.
B)   The number of clusters must be pre- specified.
C)   The procedures do not work well when the clusters are poorly defined.
D)   All of the above are disadvantages. C

Question 4

methods are commonly used in marketing research.

Accepted Answer

A)   Agglomerative clustering
B)   TwoStep clustering
C)   Divisive clustering
D)   Optimizing partitioning

Question 5

is a clustering procedure where each object starts out in a separate cluster.

Accepted Answer

A)   Agglomerative clustering
B)   Non- hierarchical clustering
C)   Hierarchical clustering
D)   Divisive clustering

Question 6

Which of the following is a variance method of clustering?

Accepted Answer

A)   Ward's method
B)   complete linkage
C)   optimizing partitioning
D)   sequential threshold

Question 7

Most methods are heuristics based on algorithms.

Accepted Answer

A)   discriminant analysis
B)   clustering
C)   analysis of variance
D)   factor analysis

Question 8

The average linkage method of hierarchical clustering is preferred to the single and complete linkage methods.

Accepted Answer

A) True 
 B)False

Question 9

Cluster analysis has been used in marketing for all of the purposes below except .

Accepted Answer

A)   identifying new product opportunities by clustering brands and products so that competitive sets within the market can be determined
B)   determining how strongly sales are related to advertising expenditures
C)   segmenting the market based on benefits sought from the purchase of a product
D)   selecting test markets

Question 10

Formal procedures for assessing the reliability and validity of clustering are simple and should be undertaken.

Accepted Answer

A) True 
 B)False

Question 11

The is a nonhierarchical method that allows for later reassignment of objects to clusters to optimize an overall criterion.

Accepted Answer

A)   optimizing partitioning method
B)   sequential threshold method
C)   parallel threshold method
D)   Ward's procedure

Question 12

In the TwoStep procedure, the euclidean measure can be used only when all of the variables are ordinal.

Accepted Answer

A) True 
 B)False

Question 13

In cluster analysis, objects with larger distances between them are more similar to each other than are those at smaller distances.

Accepted Answer

A) True 
 B)False

Question 14

If you are performing cluster analysis on the same data using different distance measures and then comparing the results across measures to determine stability of the solutions, you are at which stage of the cluster analysis process?

Accepted Answer

A)   deciding on the number of clusters
B)   interpreting and profiling the clusters
C)   assessing reliability and validity
D)   selecting a clustering procedure

Question 15

Which statement is not true about cluster analysis?

Accepted Answer

A)   Groups or clusters are suggested by the data, not defined a priori.
B)   Cluster analysis is a technique for analyzing data when the criterion or dependent variable is categorical and the independent variables are interval in nature.
C)   Cluster analysis is also called classification analysis or numerical taxonomy.
D)   Objects in each cluster tend to be similar to each other and dissimilar to objects in the other clusters.

Question 16

The are the initial starting points in nonhierarchical clustering.

Accepted Answer

A)   cluster centers
B)   factor loadings
C)   factor scores
D)   cluster centroids

Question 17

It is helpful to profile the clusters in terms of variables that were not used for clustering.

Accepted Answer

A) True 
 B)False

Question 18

Which cluster analysis procedure can automatically determine the optimal number of clusters by comparing the values of a model- choice across different clustering solutions?

Accepted Answer

A)   Ward's method
B)   divisive
C)   sequential threshold
D)   TwoStep

Question 19

The most important part of is selecting the variables on which clustering is based.

Accepted Answer

A)   formulating the clustering problem
B)   selecting a clustering procedure
C)   assessing the validity of clustering
D)   interpreting and profiling clusters

Question 20

are agglomerative methods of hierarchical clustering in which clusters are generated to minimize the within- cluster variance.

Accepted Answer

A)   Centroid methods
B)   Linkage methods
C)   Variance methods
D)   Parallel methods

Exam 20: Cluster Analysis

The most commonly used measure of similarity is the _ or its square.

Which method allows the researcher to obtain information on cluster membership of cases if the number of clusters is specified?

Which of the following is not a disadvantage of nonhierarchical clustering procedures?

methods are commonly used in marketing research.

is a clustering procedure where each object starts out in a separate cluster.

Which of the following is a variance method of clustering?

Most methods are heuristics based on algorithms.

The average linkage method of hierarchical clustering is preferred to the single and complete linkage methods.

Cluster analysis has been used in marketing for all of the purposes below except .

Formal procedures for assessing the reliability and validity of clustering are simple and should be undertaken.

The is a nonhierarchical method that allows for later reassignment of objects to clusters to optimize an overall criterion.

In the TwoStep procedure, the euclidean measure can be used only when all of the variables are ordinal.

In cluster analysis, objects with larger distances between them are more similar to each other than are those at smaller distances.

If you are performing cluster analysis on the same data using different distance measures and then comparing the results across measures to determine stability of the solutions, you are at which stage of the cluster analysis process?

Which statement is not true about cluster analysis?

The are the initial starting points in nonhierarchical clustering.

It is helpful to profile the clusters in terms of variables that were not used for clustering.

Which cluster analysis procedure can automatically determine the optimal number of clusters by comparing the values of a model- choice across different clustering solutions?

The most important part of is selecting the variables on which clustering is based.

are agglomerative methods of hierarchical clustering in which clusters are generated to minimize the within- cluster variance.