Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking

by Foster Provost

Lapointe and Legendre’s is a characteristic description; it describes what is typical or characteristic of the cluster, ignoring whether other clusters might share some of these characteristics. The one generated by the decision tree is a differential description; it describes only what differentiates this cluster from the others, ignoring the characteristics that may be shared by whiskeys within it. To put it another way: characteristic descriptions concentrate on intragroup commonalities, whereas differential descriptions concentrate on intergroup differences. Neither is inherently better — it depends on what you’re using it for.