Abstract
In this paper, we propose a new measure of space distortion, which has been introduced by Lance & Williams (1967), in combinatorial cluster analysis. In particular, our measure is defined for each clustering process, not only for the clustering method. This means that the measure depends both on the method and on the data. Since the space distortion is measured as a numerical value, it makes easy to select the method in the actual application. Furthermore, a new combinatorial clustering method which can control the space distortion is proposed by using our measure. The validity of the new methods is discussed by analyzing the numerical example.
