"A means of modifying the weights of a neural net without specifying the desired output for any input patterns. Used in self-organizing neural nets for clustering data, extracting principal components, or curve fitting." (Laurene V Fausett, "Fundamentals of Neural Networks: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications", 1994)
"Learning in which no teacher is used to show the correct response to a given input stimulus; the system must organize itself purely on the basis of the input stimuli it receives. Often synonymous with clustering." (Guido J Deboeck & Teuvo Kohonen, "Visual explorations in finance with self-organizing maps", 2000)
"learning without a priori knowledge about the classification of samples; learning without a teacher. Often the same as formation of clusters, where after these clusters can be labeled. Also optimal allocation of computing resources when only unlabeled, unclassified data are input." (Teuvo Kohonen, "Self-Organizing Maps 3rd Ed.", 2001)
"Analysis methods that do not use any data to guide the technique operations." (Glenn J Myatt, "Making Sense of Data: A Practical Guide to Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Mining", 2006)
"Learning techniques that group instances without a pre-specified dependent attribute. Clustering algorithms are usually unsupervised methods for grouping data sets." (Lluís Formiga & Francesc Alías, "GTM User Modeling for aIGA Weight Tuning in TTS Synthesis", Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, 2009)
"Method of machine learning where a model is fit to observations. It is distinguished from supervised learning by the fact that there is no a priori output." (Soledad Delgado et al, "Growing Self-Organizing Maps for Data Analysis", Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, 2009)
"The type of learning that occurs when algorithms adjust the weights in a neural network by reference to a training data set that includes input variables only. Unsupervised learning algorithms attempt to locate clusters in the input data." (Robert Nisbet et al, "Handbook of statistical analysis and data mining applications", 2009)
"Treats all variables the same way so as to determine the different classes based on diverse features observed in the collection of unlabeled data that encompass the sample set. It is assumed that the user is unaware of the classes due to the lack of information sufficiently available." (Nuno Pombo et al, "Machine Learning Approaches to Automated Medical Decision Support Systems", 2015)
"Unsupervised learning refers to a machine learning approach that uses inferential statistical modeling algorithms to discover rather than detect patterns or similarities in data. An unsupervised learning system can identify new patterns, instead of trying to match a set of patterns it encountered during training." (Judith S Hurwitz, "Cognitive Computing and Big Data Analytics", 2015)
"In unsupervised learning, the program gets the same items but has to come up with the categories on its own by discovering the underlying correlations between the items; that is why unsupervised learning is sometimes called statistical pattern recognition." (Robert J Glushko, "The Discipline of Organizing: Professional Edition, 4th Ed", 2016)
"A form of machine learning in which the goal is to identify regularities in the data. These regularities may include clusters of similar instances within the data or regularities between attributes. In contrast to supervised learning, in unsupervised learning no target attribute is defined in the data set." (John D Kelleher & Brendan Tierney, "Data science", 2018)
"Unsupervised learning identifies hidden patterns or intrinsic structures in the data. It is used to draw conclusions from datasets composed of labeled unacknowledged input data." (Soraya Sedkaoui, "Big Data Analytics for Entrepreneurial Success", 2018)
"Unsupervised learning or clustering is a way of discovering hidden structures in unlabeled data. Clustering algorithms aim to discover latent patterns in unlabeled data using features to organize instances into meaningfully dissimilar groups." (Benjamin Bengfort et al, "Applied Text Analysis with Python: Enabling Language-Aware Data Products with Machine Learning", 2018)
"A particular form of learning process that takes place without supervision and that affects the training of an artificial neural networks." (Gaetano B Ronsivalle & Arianna Boldi, "Artificial Intelligence Applied: Six Actual Projects in Big Organizations", 2019)
"In this learning, the model does not require labeled data for training. The model learns the nature of data and does predictions." (Aman Kamboj et al, "Ear Localizer: A Deep-Learning-Based Ear Localization Model for Side Face Images in the Wild", 2019)
"A class of machine learning techniques designed to identify features and patterns in data. There is no mapping function to be learned or output values to be achieved. Cluster analysis is an example of unsupervised learning." (Timofei Bogomolov et al, "Identifying Patterns in Fresh Produce Purchases: The Application of Machine Learning Techniques", 2020)
"Unsupervised algorithms mean that a program is provided with some collection of data, with no predetermined dataset being available." (Neha Garg & Kamlesh Sharma, "Machine Learning in Text Analysis", 2020)
"A machine learning technique that involves providing a machine with data that is not labeled, instead allowing for the machine to learn by association." (Sujata Ramnarayan, "Marketing and Artificial Intelligence: Personalization at Scale", 2021)
"Unsupervised Learning aims at inferring the given unlabelled data using a different type of structures present in the data points." (Hari K Kondaveeti et al, "Deep Learning Applications in Agriculture: The Role of Deep Learning in Smart Agriculture", 2021)
"Unsupervised Learning is a type of machine learning in which the algorithm does not need the data with pre-defined labels. Unsupervised machine learning instead categorizes entries within datasets by examining similarities or anomalies and then grouping different entries accordingly." (Accenture)