A system that incorporates an interactive graphical user interface for
visualizing clusters (categories) and segments (summarized clusters) of
data. Specifically, the system automatically categorizes incoming case
data into clusters, summarizes those clusters into segments, determines
similarity measures for the segments, scores the selected segments
through the similarity measures, and then forms and visually depicts
hierarchical organizations of those selected clusters. The system also
automatically and dynamically reduces, as necessary, a depth of the
hierarchical organization, through elimination of unnecessary
hierarchical levels and inter-nodal links, based on similarity measures
of segments or segment groups. Attribute/value data that tends to
meaningfully characterize each segment is also scored, rank ordered based
on normalized scores, and then graphically displayed. The system permits
a user to browse through the hierarchy, and, to readily comprehend
segment inter-relationships, selectively expand and contract the
displayed hierarchy, as desired, as well as to compare two selected
segments or segment groups together and graphically display the results
of that comparison. An alternative discriminant-based cluster scoring
technique is also presented.