Two-Way Joining
Previously, we have discussed this method in terms of "objects" that are to be clustered . In all other types of analyses in STATISTICA the research question of interest is usually expressed in terms of cases (observations) or variables. It turns out that the clustering of both may yield useful results. For example, imagine a study where a medical researcher has gathered data on different measures of physical fitness (variables) for a sample of heart patients (cases). The researcher may want to cluster cases (patients) to detect clusters of patients with similar syndromes. At the same time, the researcher may want to cluster variables (fitness measures) to detect clusters of measures that appear to tap similar physical abilities. In the Cluster Analysis module, you can choose to cluster cases as well as variables.
Two-way Joining
Given the discussion in the paragraph above concerning whether to cluster cases or variables, one may wonder why not cluster both simultaneously? The Cluster Analysis module contains a two-way joining procedure to do exactly that. Two-way joining is useful in (the relatively rare) circumstances when one expects that both cases and variables will simultaneously contribute to the uncovering of meaningful patterns of clusters. For example, returning to the example above, the medical researcher may want to identify clusters of patients that are similar with regard to particular clusters of similar measures of physical fitness. The difficulty with interpreting these results may arise from the fact that the similarities between different clusters may pertain to (or be caused by) somewhat different subsets of variables. Thus, the resulting structure (clusters) is by nature not homogeneous. This may seem a bit confusing at first, and, indeed, compared to the other clustering methods described , two-way joining is probably the one least commonly used. However, some researchers believe that this method offers a powerful exploratory data analysis tool (for more information you may want to refer to the detailed description of this method in Hartigan, 1975).