Encyclopedia · 187 concepts

Math & Optimization · beginner · concept 38 of 187

K-Means Clustering

The simplest clustering algorithm, assigns data points to K groups by iteratively moving cluster centers to minimize within-cluster distances. Fast, intuitive, but requires choosing K upfront. It is one member of a family: hierarchical clustering builds a dendrogram of merges, DBSCAN finds arbitrary shapes by density, and Gaussian mixtures soften assignments via EM.

Key terms

CentroidsElbow methodInertiaK selectionHierarchical clusteringDBSCANGaussian mixtures & EMSpectral clustering

Learn these first

Videos

StatQuest: K-means clustering

StatQuest with Josh Starmer · YouTube

12. Clustering

MIT OpenCourseWare · YouTube