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Analysis of the Quality of life using cluster analysis and comparison with the Human Development Index
Pánková, Barbara ; Miskolczi, Martina (advisor) ; Langhamrová, Jana (referee)
Nowadays quality of life is often discussed topic. In defining this term, there is considerable ambiguity and disunity, since there is no universally accepted definition, nor theoretically sophisticated model. However, despite this fact, the level of quality of life is currently one of the most discussed topic. Monitoring the quality of life by using a variety of indicators are engaged in several international organizations, one of them is the Development Programme of the United Nations. This organization annually publishes the Human Development Index, which divides the world´s countries into four groups according to their level of development: low, medium, high and very high development. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the quality of life in 125 countries by using cluster analysis, accurately the Ward's method. Quality of life in this thesis is evaluated based on 19 demographic and economic indicators, which include life expectancy, literacy rate, access to drinking water and infant mortality rate. The cluster analysis divided the country into individual clusters by their similarities. Six clusters were created by this analysis, which had been compared with the results of Human Development Index. The clusters very well reflect the division, which is commonly used in the characterization of developing and developed countries. Each of the six clusters can be very well described and characterized in terms of quality of life. It is also possible qualify those clusters as poorest developing, low developed, moderately developed, medium development, high and very high development countries. Based on the results it can be stated that this analysis is consistent with other indicators of quality of life and the resulting clusters are identical with the division of countries which is commonly used.
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Cluster analysis as a tool for classification of objects
Budilová, Šárka ; Löster, Tomáš (advisor) ; Šulc, Zdeněk (referee)
Cluster analysis is a popular method of multivariate statistics. Based on mutual similarities between objects this method is able to classify and divide objects into several groups or clusters. The results of the clustering can be different by using different methods, measures of distance and procedures. The main aim of this thesis is to compare the results of several methods of cluster analysis with the known classification of classes from the original data file. In total, there are 15 data files, which were analyzed and each of them contained known information about the right allocation of objects in groups. The success of clustering of each method was calculated by comparing the known classification of classes and resulted clusters. In addition to the comparison of individual methods of cluster analysis was compared the impact of standardization and correlation to the success of each method. To reflect the distance betweeen the objects within each clusters, squared Euclidean distance was used. The results of this thesis point out that better success of clustering were achieved in the case of correlated variables in data file. The succes of clustering was higher about 2 percent points than in the case when correlated variables were deleted from data set. The methods divided 69,8 % objects before standardization and 70,8 % objects after standardization. The results also show a large importance of standardization in the case of Ward´s method. After standardization this method rank the most objects into correct classification classes and were more succesful, about nine percent points. In the case of correlated variables is the succes of the method 76,4 %. Standardization positively influences also centroid method and the method of farthest neighbour. Median method, nearest neighbour method and the method of average linkage achieve higher success of clustering in the case of original, nonstandardized variables (uneven variables).
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