In an effort to inform political leaders and economists discussing the deregulation of electric and gas utilities, data on eight numerical variables from utility companies have been grouped using hierarchical clustering based on Euclidean distance to measure dissimilarity between observations and complete linkage as the agglomeration method.

(a)Based on the following dendrogram, what is the most appropriate number of clusters to organize these utility companies?

clusters are appropriate based on complete linkage. (b) Using the following data on the Observations 10, 13, 4, and 20, confirm that the complete linkage distance betw as displayed in the dendrogram. Observation 10 13 4 20 Income/Debt 0.032 0.195 -0.510 0.466 Return 0.741 0.875 0.207 0.474 Cost 0.700 0.748 -0.004 -0.490 Load -0.892 -0.735 -0.219 0.655 Peak -0.173 1.013 -0.943 0.083 Sales -0.693 -0.489 -0.702 -0.458 PercentNuclear 1.620 2.275 1.328 1.733 Total FuelCosts -0.863 -1.035 -0.724 -0.721 If required, round your answers to three decimal places. Do not round intermediate calculations. Distance from Observation 10 and Observation 4: Distance from Observation 10 and Observation 20:Observation 10 13 4 20 Income/Debt 0.032 0.195 -0.510 0.466 Return 0.741 0.875 0.207 0.474 Cost 0.700 0.748 -0.004 -0.490 Load -0.892 -0.735 -0.219 0.655 Peak -0.173 1.013 -0.943 0.083 Sales -0.693 -0.489 -0.702 -0.458 PercentNuclear 1.620 2.275 1.328 1.733 Total FuelCosts -0.863 -1.035 -0.724 -0.721