<p>Welcome to class!</p><p>At the beginning of the class, we will see how algorithms for&nbsp;<strong>clustering&nbsp;</strong>a set of data points&nbsp;will help us determine how yeast became such good wine-makers. At the bottom of this email is the Bioinformatics Cartoon for this chapter, courtesy of <a href="http://bearandfox.com" target="_blank" title="Link: http://bearandfox.com">Randall Christopher</a> and serving as a chapter header in the Specialization's bestselling <a href="http://bioinformaticsalgorithms.com" target="_blank">print companion</a>. How did the monkey lose a wine-drinking contest to a tiny mammal? &nbsp;Why have Pavel and Phillip become cavemen? And will flipping a coin help them escape their eternal boredom until they can return to the present? Start learning to find out!</p><p><img width="550" alt="" src="http://bioinformaticsalgorithms.com/images/cover/clustering_cropped.jpg" title="Image: http://bioinformaticsalgorithms.com/images/cover/clustering_cropped.jpg"></p>

<p>Welcome to week 2 of class!</p> <p>This week, we will see how we can move from a "hard" assignment of points to clusters toward a "soft" assignment that allows the boundaries of the clusters to blend. We will also see how to adapt the Lloyd algorithm that we encountered in the first week in order to produce an algorithm for soft clustering. We will also see another clustering algorithm called "hierarchical clustering" that groups objects into larger and larger clusters.</p>