Hierarchical clustering algorithms are either top-down or bottom-up. Bottom-up algorithms treat each document as a singleton cluster at the outset and then successively merge (or agglomerate) pairs of clusters until all clusters have been merged into a single cluster that contains all documents. Bottom-up hierarchical clustering is therefore called hierarchical agglomerative clustering or HAC . Top-down clustering requires a method for splitting a cluster. It proceeds by splitting clusters recursively until individual documents are reached.
+ http://…tive_Hierarchical_Clustering_Overview.htm … Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC)