Medoids

Part of speech: noun, verb

Definitions

1. A representative object or point that minimizes the sum of distances to other objects in a dataset
2. A central point within a cluster that serves as a representative for all points in that cluster by minimizing dispersion
3. An object from a dataset that is central to a group, often used in cluster analysis for defining clusters in statistical methods

Etymology: "Medoids" is the plural of "medoid," a term for the most central representative point in a set of data. The word is built from "medi-," drawn from the Latin "medius" meaning "middle," and the Greek-derived suffix "-oid," meaning "resembling" or "having the form of." A medoid, then, is a point that resembles the middle of its group, and the plural simply names several such points at once, as when a clustering algorithm picks out one representative member for each group it finds.