Glossary /  
Unsupervised Learning

Unsupervised Learning

Category:
Data Science Concept
Level:
Advanced

Unsupervised learning is a type of machine learning where the algorithm learns from an unlabeled dataset to discover patterns and relationships without the need for human intervention. In contrast to supervised learning, unsupervised learning does not require a labeled dataset to learn from. Instead, it analyzes the data and finds similarities and differences between the different data points. Unsupervised learning is particularly useful when dealing with large datasets where manually labeling data points is impractical.

Key highlights:

  • Unsupervised learning is used for finding patterns in unlabeled data.
  • Clustering and dimensionality reduction are common unsupervised learning techniques.
  • Unsupervised learning can be used to identify hidden trends and patterns in data.

Clustering is a common unsupervised learning technique used to group similar data points together based on their attributes. Dimensionality reduction is another common technique used to reduce the number of features in a dataset while still preserving its most important information.

References:

Applying Unsupervised Learning to Business:
Unsupervised learning has many practical applications in business. For example, clustering can be used to segment customers or products based on their similarities and differences. This can help companies to identify new market opportunities, improve customer targeting, and optimize product offerings. Dimensionality reduction can be used to identify the most important features in a dataset, which can help businesses to make better decisions based on the most relevant information. Additionally, unsupervised learning can be used to identify anomalies in data, which can help businesses to detect fraud or other types of irregular activity.