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

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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There are two types of ''people'' in the world: those ''who'' use the word “who” to refer to people and the word “that” to refer to things, and those ''who'' don’t. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.77|172.71.151.77]] 02:58, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 
There are two types of ''people'' in the world: those ''who'' use the word “who” to refer to people and the word “that” to refer to things, and those ''who'' don’t. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.77|172.71.151.77]] 02:58, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
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:...and those whom use "whom"..? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.57|172.70.162.57]] 09:00, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
  
 
== editorial ==
 
== editorial ==

Revision as of 09:00, 31 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)

Yes, the joke about why there are 8 billion clusters mentioned in the title text. 162.158.78.220 20:47, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
No, I did not miss that. --172.70.211.136 22:53, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
While it's true that clusters can depend on multiple traits, a cluster that depends on ALL human traits at once (or a very large number of them) is useless in practice. A useful cluster depends on a relatively limited number of traits. I think that's where the "ignoring" comes in. 162.158.146.208 22:30, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Supposing that's true, that would apply to any sample of humans. The "since all humans are unique" part would still be false, and the comment still wouldn't make sense in context as a response to the specific scenario of 8 billion humans. --172.70.211.136 22:53, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
Most people would object to the idea that they are fully defined by their DNA. Yet even taking just DNA, the probability of two humans having same is practically zero. Even identical twins have differences in DNA due to radiation and toxins! Sure, 99% of DNA is identical between all humans (is what makes them human), but DNA is over 6 Gigabase pairs. And how many do you think criminalists needs in DNA identification to ensure match probabilities of 1 in a quintillion? Just hundreds. Yes, every human is unique. -- Hkmaly (talk) 02:50, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

There are two types of people in the world: those who use the word “who” to refer to people and the word “that” to refer to things, and those who don’t. 172.71.151.77 02:58, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

...and those whom use "whom"..? 172.70.162.57 09:00, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

editorial

This sentence clause appears to contain a typo: ", and indicate on a graph of the data has two distinct populations". It might be clearer as ", and indicate on a graph if the data has two distinct populations". (Fixed)