How Is Silhouette Score Calculated?

Silhouette score is an important measure of the quality of a clustering result. It is used to evaluate the performance of a clustering algorithm by assigning a score to each data point based on its distance from other clusters or its proximity to its own cluster. The higher the score, the better the clustering result.

What Is Silhouette Score? The Silhouette score is a measure of how well each data point fits in its assigned cluster. It ranges from -1 to 1, with -1 indicating that the data point is far away from its own cluster and 1 indicating that it is very close to its own cluster. A value of 0 suggests that the data point lies between two clusters, or has an equal distance to two different clusters.

How Is Silhouette Score Calculated? The Silhouette score is calculated by taking into consideration two factors: intra-cluster distance and inter-cluster distance. Intra-cluster distance measures how close each data point is to other points in its own cluster, while inter-cluster distance measures how far away each data point is from points in other clusters. The Silhouette score for a given data point is then calculated by subtracting the mean intra-cluster distance from the mean inter-cluster distance and dividing it by the maximum value between these two distances.

Why Is Silhouette Score Important? The Silhouette score can be used as an indicator for how well a clustering algorithm has performed in terms of finding distinct clusters within a dataset. A high Silhouette score indicates that there are distinct clusters present in a dataset and that each data point belongs to one specific cluster. On the other hand, a low Silhouette score indicates that there may be some overlap between different clusters and/or that not all points belong to distinct groups within a dataset.

Conclusion: Silhouette scores are essential for evaluating clustering algorithms as they give an indication of how well each algorithm has been able to divide up a dataset into distinct groups based on similarity or proximity measurements between individual points. They are calculated by taking into account both intra-cluster and inter-cluster distances and are expressed as values ranging from -1 to 1, with higher values indicating better results from clustering algorithms.