Unsupervised Learning (Glossary)

Unsupervised learning comes from the fields of artificial intelligence and big data. The term means „unsupervised learning“ and describes a special method by which computers gain insights from data without humans telling them beforehand what is right or wrong.

Imagine you give a programme thousands of customer details without asking it what products those customers are interested in. The system then searches for patterns by itself, such as groups of people with very similar interests or purchasing behaviour. This way, a company can find out which customer segments exist without having to define them beforehand.

A vivid example: In an online shop, an algorithm analyses which products are frequently bought together, without anyone telling it which combinations to look for. The system itself discovers that customers who buy toys often also choose children's books. This insight can later be used for targeted recommendations.

So, unsupervised learning helps to find hidden connections and use large amounts of data efficiently – completely without fixed guidelines from humans.