Discussion Post: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Case-Study Cluster Analysis
This case-study examines the patterns, symmetries, associations and causality in a rare but devastating disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). A major clinically relevant question in this biomedical study is: What patient phenotypes can be automatically and reliably identified and used to predict the change of the ALSFRS slope over time? This problem aims to explore the data set by unsupervised learning.
o Load and prepare the data.
o Perform summary and preliminary visualization.
o Train a k-Means model on the data, experiment at least two different k values, and explain which k value is a better choice.
o Evaluating the model performance by report the center of clusters.
o Visualize the final clustering result.
The response must include a reference list. Using Times New Roman 12 pnt font, double-space, one-inch margins, and APA style of writing and citations.