K-nearest neighbors (KNN) is a supervised machine learning algorithm suitable for classification and regression tasks by finding the k-nearest data points to predict the category or value of a new data point.
Pros of KNN include easy implementation, understanding, and versatility for both regression and classification tasks.
Cons of KNN are its computational expense for large datasets and sensitivity to the hyperparameter k.
The choice of k in KNN affects bias and computational cost, with lower k values leading to more bias and higher k values being more expensive.
KNN relies on calculating distances between data points using methods like Euclidean, Manhattan, and Minkowski.
Real-world applications of KNN include image classification, fraud detection, recommender systems, house price prediction, and customer grouping by interests.
In a given dataset example, the KNN algorithm is applied to predict breast cancer diagnosis based on various features like radius, texture, area, etc.
The process involves preprocessing data, handling outliers, encoding non-numeric data, training the model, testing its accuracy, and tuning the hyperparameter k.
A program is provided for implementing KNN in Python using scikit-learn, featuring data preprocessing, modeling, outlier detection, and basic analysis.
An example is shown where the model's accuracy is evaluated for different values of k to demonstrate the impact of choosing the neighbor count on training and testing scores.