Unsupervised Learning
Definition
A Machine Learning approach where the model is trained using data that is neither classified nor labeled. The algorithm must act on that information without prior guidance, finding hidden patterns or intrinsic structures within the data.
Explain Like I'm New
Learning without an answer key. You dump 10,000 random photos of animals into the computer. You don't tell it what any of them are. The computer automatically sorts them into groups based on similarities (e.g., 'These ones have pointy ears', 'These ones have scales').
Real World Example
Customer Segmentation in marketing. A grocery store feeds its purchase history into an algorithm. The algorithm automatically groups shoppers into 'Budget Shoppers', 'Bulk Buyers', and 'Organic Only' without anyone telling it those categories existed.
Common Use Cases
- •Clustering
- •Anomaly detection
- •Dimensionality reduction
Interview Questions
basic
- Are datasets labeled in Unsupervised Learning?
intermediate
- What is 'Clustering' in the context of Unsupervised Learning?