Understanding
Clustering
Clustering groups data points based on similarity, a key concept in unsupervised
learning. It helps uncover hidden patterns in data without pre-existing labels.
Clustering Types
Hard Clustering Soft Clustering
Each data point belongs entirely to one cluster. Think of it like Assigns probabilities of a data point belonging to multiple
sorting objects into distinct boxes. clusters. It's like saying an object has a 70% chance of being in
box A and 30% in box B.
Applications of Clustering
1 Market Segmentation
Group customers for targeted advertising.
2 Anomaly Detection
Identify unusual data points, like fraudulent transactions.
3 Medical Imaging
Find diseased areas in X-rays.
Centroid-based Clustering
This method uses distance metrics like Euclidean distance to group data points
around centroids. K-means is a popular example.
Density-based Clustering
This method identifies clusters based on the density of data points. DBSCAN is a
popular algorithm for this type of clustering.
Connectivity-based Clustering
Hierarchical clustering builds a tree-like structure (dendrogram) to represent data point relationships. It can be agglomerative
(bottom-up) or divisive (top-down).
Distribution-based
Clustering
This method assumes data points are generated from specific probability
distributions. The Gaussian Mixture Model is a common example.
Clustering in Diverse Fields
Clustering has applications in various fields, from marketing and biology to finance and cybersecurity. Its versatility makes it a
valuable tool for data analysis.
