Advantages to Using this Technique. With a large number of variables, K-Means may be computationally faster than hierarchical clustering (if K is small). K-Means may produce tighter clusters than hierarchical clustering, especially if the clusters are globular.he version of the K-Means algorithm used in GeneLinker differs from the conventional K-Means algorithm in that GeneLinker does not compute the centroid of the clusters to measure the distance from a data point to a cluster.