Parsimonious consensus hierarchies, partitions and fuzzy partitioning of a set of hierarchies

Methodology is described for fitting a fuzzy partition and a parsimonious consensus hierarchy (ultrametric matrix) to a set of hierarchies of the same set of objects. A model defining a fuzzy partition of a set of hierarchical classifications, with every class of the partition synthesized by a parsimonious consensus hierarchy is described. Each consensus includes an optimal consensus hard partition of objects and all the hierarchical agglomerative aggregations among the clusters of the consensus partition. The performances of the methodology are illustrated by an extended simulation study and applications to real data. A discussion is provided on the new methodology and some interesting future developments are described.