The Clustering of Categorical Data: A Comparison of a Model-based and a Distance-based Approach

For clustering multivariate categorical data, a latent class model-based approach (LCC) with local independence is compared with a distance-based approach, namely partitioning around medoids (PAM). A comprehensive simulation study was evaluated by both a model-based as well as a distance-based criterion. LCC was better according to the model-based criterion and PAM was sometimes better according to the distance-based criterion. However, LCC had an overall good and sometimes better distance-based performance as PAM, although this was not the case in a real data set on tribal art items.