Book Image

Applied Unsupervised Learning with R

By : Alok Malik, Bradford Tuckfield
Book Image

Applied Unsupervised Learning with R

By: Alok Malik, Bradford Tuckfield

Overview of this book

Starting with the basics, Applied Unsupervised Learning with R explains clustering methods, distribution analysis, data encoders, and features of R that enable you to understand your data better and get answers to your most pressing business questions. This book begins with the most important and commonly used method for unsupervised learning - clustering - and explains the three main clustering algorithms - k-means, divisive, and agglomerative. Following this, you'll study market basket analysis, kernel density estimation, principal component analysis, and anomaly detection. You'll be introduced to these methods using code written in R, with further instructions on how to work with, edit, and improve R code. To help you gain a practical understanding, the book also features useful tips on applying these methods to real business problems, including market segmentation and fraud detection. By working through interesting activities, you'll explore data encoders and latent variable models. By the end of this book, you will have a better understanding of different anomaly detection methods, such as outlier detection, Mahalanobis distances, and contextual and collective anomaly detection.

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Table of Contents (9 chapters)
Applied Unsupervised Learning with R
Applied Unsupervised Learning with R
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to Clustering Methods
Introduction to Clustering Methods
Introduction
Introduction to Clustering
Introduction to the Iris Dataset
Introduction to k-means Clustering
Introduction to k-means Clustering with Built-In Functions
Introduction to Market Segmentation
Introduction to k-medoids Clustering
Summary
2
Advanced Clustering Methods
Advanced Clustering Methods
Introduction
Introduction to k-modes Clustering
Introduction to Density-Based Clustering (DBSCAN)
Summary
3
Probability Distributions
Probability Distributions
Introduction
Basic Terminology of Probability Distributions
Introduction to Kernel Density Estimation
Introduction to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test
Summary
4
Dimension Reduction
Dimension Reduction
Introduction
Market Basket Analysis
Summary
5
Data Comparison Methods
Data Comparison Methods
Introduction
Analytic Signatures
Comparison of Signatures
Latent Variable Models – Factor Analysis
Summary
6
Anomaly Detection
Anomaly Detection
Introduction
Univariate Outlier Detection
Kernel Density
Summary
Appendix
Appendix
Chapter 1: Introduction to Clustering Methods
Chapter 2: Advanced Clustering Methods
Chapter 3: Probability Distributions
Chapter 4: Dimension Reduction
Chapter 5: Data Comparison Methods
Chapter 6: Anomaly Detection

Introduction

So far, we've learned about some of the most basic algorithms of unsupervised learning: k-means clustering and k-medoids clustering. These are not only important for practical use, but are also important for understanding clustering itself.

In this chapter, we're going to study some other advanced clustering algorithms. We aren't calling them advanced because they are difficult to understand, but because, before using them, a data scientist should have insights into why he or she is using these algorithms instead of the general clustering algorithms we studied in the last chapter. k-means is a general-purpose clustering algorithm that is sufficient for most cases, but in some special cases, depending on the type of data, advanced clustering algorithms can produce better results.

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End of Section 2
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