About Lesson
In machine learning, the nearest neighbor classifier is a simple yet powerful algorithm. It operates based on the idea that similar instances tend to have similar labels. Here’s how it works:
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Distance Metric:
- To determine which instance is “nearest,” we need a way to measure the similarity or dissimilarity between data points.
- The most common distance metric used is the Euclidean distance. It’s like measuring the straight-line distance between two points in a geometric space.
- For example, if you have two points in a 2D space (x1, y1) and (x2, y2), the Euclidean distance between them is:
d = sqrt{(x2 – x1)^2 + (y2 – y1)^2}
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Nearest Neighbor Classification:
- Given a new data point (the “query” point), the algorithm finds the training instance (from a labeled dataset) that is closest to the query point.
- It assigns the label of the nearest training instance to the query point.
- The number of neighbors considered (e.g., 1-nearest neighbor, k-nearest neighbors) depends on the specific variant of the algorithm.
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Pixel-by-Pixel Matching (MNIST Example):
- In the context of image recognition (like the MNIST dataset of handwritten digits), we can use pixel-by-pixel matching.
- Each image is represented as a grid of pixels, where each pixel corresponds to a shade of gray (usually ranging from 0 to 255).
- To compare two images, we compare the pixel values at corresponding positions.
- For example, if two images have similar pixel values at the top-left corner, bottom-right corner, and all pixels in between, they are considered more similar.
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Challenges and Preprocessing:
- Pixel-by-pixel matching can be sensitive to small shifts or scaling of images.
- To mitigate this, preprocessing steps are often applied, such as centering the images.
- Centering ensures that the important features (like the digit itself) are aligned consistently across all images.
“Nearest” refers to finding the closest data point (based on some distance metric) to a given query point. Nearest neighbor classifiers use this concept to make predictions.
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