Pharmacogenomics of Cystic Fibrosis

Geographical map explaining the weakness of the hierarchical clustering algorithm. Two small islands in the South Pacific (small red and yellow circles) are close together. When grouped with nearby landmasses, however, one of the islands becomes grouped with Borneo, whereas the other is grouped with New Guinea. On a larger scale, the red-ringed island becomes grouped with Australia, whereas the yellow-ringed island becomes grouped with Asia. Thus, the algorithm can map two entities that are in reality quite close as being distal to one another. On the other hand, when the algorithm describes two entities as being proximal to each other, the description is generally very reliable.