K-Means Clustering in R: Step-by-Step Example

Clustering is a technique in machine learning that attempts to find clusters of observations within a dataset. The goal is to find clusters such that the observations within each cluster are quite similar to each other, while observations in different clusters are quite different from each other. Clustering is a form of unsupervised learning because we're simply attempting to find structure within a dataset rather than predicting the value of some response variable. When this information is available, clustering can be used to identify households that are similar and may be more likely to purchase certain products or respond better to a certain type of advertising. One of the most common forms of clustering is known as k-means clustering.