Supervised and unsupervised learning are two fundamental types of machine learning, differing in how models are trained.
Supervised learning:
- The model learns from labeled data, where each training sample has an associated label.
- The goal is to predict labels for new data.
- Examples: classification (e.g., image recognition) and regression (e.g., price prediction).
Unsupervised learning:
- The model learns from unlabeled data, with the goal of discovering structure or patterns in the data.
- The goal is to identify hidden structures or group similar data.
- Examples: clustering (e.g., customer segmentation) and dimensionality reduction (e.g., PCA).
Main differences:
- Training data: Supervised learning requires labeled data, while unsupervised learning uses unlabeled data.
- Goal: Supervised learning focuses on predicting labels, while unsupervised learning focuses on discovering patterns.
- Applications: Supervised learning is used in tasks requiring prediction, while unsupervised learning is used for data exploration and structure discovery.