Anomaly Detection: Identifying Unusual Patterns in Data
1 min readDec 31, 2022
Anomaly detection is the process of identifying unusual or unexpected patterns in data. Anomaly detection algorithms are used to identify these patterns and flag them as potentially interesting or problematic.
There are many different approaches to anomaly detection, ranging from simple statistical methods to more complex machine-learning algorithms. Some common methods for anomaly detection include:
- Statistical methods: These methods use statistical measures, such as mean and standard deviation, to identify unusual data points.
- Clustering algorithms: These algorithms group data points into clusters and flag data points that are significantly different from other points in the same cluster as anomalous.
- Density-based methods: These methods identify anomalous data points by comparing the local density of a data point to the densities of other points in the dataset.
- Classification algorithms: These algorithms use labeled training data to learn a model that can predict the class label for a given data point. Anomalous data points are those that the model is unable to classify accurately.
Anomaly detection algorithms are used in a variety of applications, including cybersecurity, fraud detection, and quality control.