Title: single linkage
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - single linkage
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.10142
Status: current

Definition
Linkage criterion in hierarchical clustering in which the distance between two clusters is the distance between those two objects (one from each cluster) that are closest together.

Note
A drawback of this method is the so-called chaining phenomenon, which refers to the gradual growth of a cluster as one element at a time gets added to it. This may lead to impractically heterogeneous clusters and difficulties in defining classes that could usefully subdivide the data.

Related Term
- hierarchical clustering: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/10129

Source
- PAC, 2016, 88, 407. 'Vocabulary of concepts and terms in chemometrics (IUPAC Recommendations 2016)' on page 432 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2015-0605)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10142/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10142/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/10142/xml

Citation: Citation: 'single linkage' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.10142
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Accessed: 2026-07-25T06:54:52+00:00