Difference between revisions of "Talk:2731: K-Means Clustering"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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(Explanation seems wrong about unique data points implying that clustering must ignore traits)
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This feels very similar to the joke "There are 10 types of people: those who know binary and those who don't." Except that the real joke here is that Ponytail doesn't have anything meaningful to justify her version. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.150|172.70.206.150]] 17:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 
This feels very similar to the joke "There are 10 types of people: those who know binary and those who don't." Except that the real joke here is that Ponytail doesn't have anything meaningful to justify her version. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.150|172.70.206.150]] 17:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
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Current explanation claims that since every human is unique, clusters can only be formed by ignoring some traits. This seems false; a cluster could depend on multiple traits, so there's no obvious limit to the number of traits that could be used when forming clusters. Perhaps they mean that clusters can only be formed by combining non-identical points into the same cluster, but that's literally the entire purpose of clustering and applies to all clustering ever, so it seems like both a trivial observation and a non-sequitur. Am I missing something? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.90|172.70.211.90]] 19:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Revision as of 19:54, 30 January 2023


The wikipedia article does not clear anything up 162.158.78.228 13:53, 30 January 2023 (UTC)Bumpf

The "Convergence of k-means" animation is reasonably distinctive for a two-dimensional case, showing at least the motivation for the problem . Could it be attached here? Mia yun Ruse (talk) 14:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, this is probably the least explanatory Explain xkcd I've read in the past 3 years. Still a lot of heavy math. 162.158.186.95 16:50, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

This feels very similar to the joke "There are 10 types of people: those who know binary and those who don't." Except that the real joke here is that Ponytail doesn't have anything meaningful to justify her version. 172.70.206.150 17:45, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Current explanation claims that since every human is unique, clusters can only be formed by ignoring some traits. This seems false; a cluster could depend on multiple traits, so there's no obvious limit to the number of traits that could be used when forming clusters. Perhaps they mean that clusters can only be formed by combining non-identical points into the same cluster, but that's literally the entire purpose of clustering and applies to all clustering ever, so it seems like both a trivial observation and a non-sequitur. Am I missing something? 172.70.211.90 19:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)