Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Principles of Data Science

You're reading from   Principles of Data Science Mathematical techniques and theory to succeed in data-driven industries

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Dec 2016
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781785887918
Length 388 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Sinan Ozdemir Sinan Ozdemir
Author Profile Icon Sinan Ozdemir
Sinan Ozdemir
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (15) Chapters Close

Preface 1. How to Sound Like a Data Scientist FREE CHAPTER 2. Types of Data 3. The Five Steps of Data Science 4. Basic Mathematics 5. Impossible or Improbable – A Gentle Introduction to Probability 6. Advanced Probability 7. Basic Statistics 8. Advanced Statistics 9. Communicating Data 10. How to Tell If Your Toaster Is Learning – Machine Learning Essentials 11. Predictions Don't Grow on Trees – or Do They? 12. Beyond the Essentials 13. Case Studies Index

K-means clustering


K-means clustering is our first example of an unsupervised machine learning model. Remember this means that we are not making predictions; we are trying instead to extract structure from seemingly unstructured data.

Clustering is a family of unsupervised machine learning models that attempt to group data points into clusters with centroids.

Note

Definition:

Cluster: A group of data points that behave similarly.

Definition:

Centroid: The center of a cluster. Can be thought of as an average point in the cluster.

The preceding definition can be quite vague, but it becomes specific when narrowed down to specific domains. For example, online shoppers who behave similarly might shop for similar things or at similar shops, whereas similar software companies might make comparable software at comparable prices.

Here is a visualization of clusters of points:

In the preceding figure, our human brains can very easily see the difference between the four clusters. Namely that the red cluster...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at ₹800/month. Cancel anytime