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Kush_McNuggz t1_jdsdy2y wrote

I'm learning the very basics of clustering and classification algorithms. From my understanding, these use hard cutoffs to set boundaries between the groups in the outputs. My question is - do modern algorithms allow for smoothing or "adding weight" to the boundaries, so they are not just hard cutoffs? And if so, are there any applications where you've seen this done?

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Matthew2229 t1_jduz7mi wrote

When you're clustering or classifying, you are predicting something discrete (clusters/classes), so it's unclear what you mean by removing these hard cutoffs. There must be some kind of hard cutoff when doing clustering/classification unless you are okay with something having a fuzzy classification (e.g. 70% class A / 30% class B).

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Kush_McNuggz t1_jdvwik4 wrote

Ah ok thanks, I see now. I didn't know the correct term for fuzzy classification but that's what I was trying to describe.

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