I conducted a Zoom meeting with Dr. Asha Gowda, Associate Professor at Siddaganga Institute of Technology, which is in Karnataka, India.

Dr. Gowda had conducted machine learning research on identifying edible and toxic mushrooms, and she has expertise in computer science, information systems, and data mining.

Important points discussed in the meeting:

• Dr. Gowda stated that the k-means clustering algorithm, which was the clustering analysis algorithm I had originally chosen in my experimental design, cannot be implemented on my dataset. This is because the k-means algorithm is only used on continuous data, and this data set lacks numerical values.

• The alternative algorithm Dr. Gowda proposed was the k-modes algorithm, which utilizes similarity between data points instead of distances between data points to form clusters.

• In the unlikely case that I need to perform any dimensionality reduction, the PCA algorithm would be a decent option.

My meeting with her can be accessed here.