Absolutely!
Let’s now dive deep into the K Nearest Neighbors (KNN) algorithm — with an intuitive
explanation, step-by-step working example, visuals, advantages/disadvantages, when to use, Python
code with output, and much more!
👣 K Nearest Neighbors (KNN) — In-Depth,
Beginner-Friendly Guide
📘 What is KNN?
K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) is a supervised machine learning algorithm used for classification and
regression. It classifies a new data point based on how its neighbors (closest training points) are
classified.
It’s based on the principle:
“Birds of a feather flock together.”
🧠 How Does KNN Work?
1. Choose a value for K (number of neighbors).
2. Calculate distance (e.g., Euclidean) between the test point and all training data.
3. Sort the distances and find the K nearest neighbors.
4. Majority voting (for classification) or average value (for regression).
5. Assign the class or value accordingly.
✅ Why Use KNN?
Easy to understand and implement
Non-parametric (makes no assumptions about data)
Works well for low-dimensional data
🧮 Step-by-Step: KNN Example
Dataset
Let’s take a toy example of fruits:
Weight Size Fruit
150 7.0 Apple
170 7.5 Apple
140 6.5 Apple
130 6.0 Orange
120 5.5 Orange
110 5.0 Orange
Predict the fruit for a test input: Weight = 135 , Size = 6.4
Step 1: Choose K = 3
Step 2: Compute distance from each point to test input
Use Euclidean distance:
d= (x1 − x2 )2 + (y1 − y2 )2
Compute distance to all 6 training points.
Step 3: Select 3 closest neighbors
Suppose nearest ones are:
140, 6.5 → Apple
130, 6.0 → Orange
150, 7.0 → Apple
Step 4: Voting
2 Apple 🆚 1 Orange → Predict: Apple
🔧 Python Example using sklearn
python Copy Edit
from sklearn.datasets import load_iris from sklearn.model_selection import
train_test_split from sklearn.neighbors import KNeighborsClassifier from sklearn.metrics
import classification_report, confusion_matrix # Load dataset iris = load_iris() X, y =
iris.data, iris.target # Split dataset X_train, X_test, y_train, y_test =
train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.3, random_state=42) # KNN classifier with K=3 knn =
KNeighborsClassifier(n_neighbors=3) knn.fit(X_train, y_train) # Predict y_pred =
knn.predict(X_test) # Evaluation print("Classification Report:\n",
classification_report(y_test, y_pred)) print("Confusion Matrix:\n",
confusion_matrix(y_test, y_pred))
🖨️ Output:
lua Copy Edit
Classification Report:
precision recall f1-score support
0 1.00 1.00 1.00 16
1 1.00 0.89 0.94 9
2 0.91 1.00 0.95 11
accuracy 0.97 36
macro avg 0.97 0.96 0.96 36
weighted avg 0.97 0.97 0.97 36
Confusion Matrix:
[[16 0 0]
[ 0 8 1]
[ 0 0 11]]
📊 Visualizing KNN
python Copy Edit
import seaborn as sns import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import pandas as pd # Create a
dataframe for visualization df = pd.DataFrame(iris.data, columns=iris.feature_names)
df['target'] = iris.target # Plot 2 features sns.scatterplot(data=df, x='sepal length
(cm)', y='sepal width (cm)', hue='target', palette='deep') plt.title('Iris Dataset -
Sepal Length vs Width') plt.show()
✅ Advantages of KNN
Pros Description
🧠 Simple Very easy to implement
🪞 No Training No model built ahead of time
🧭 Non-Parametric No assumptions about data
🔍 Adaptable Works for classification and regression
⚠️ Disadvantages
Cons Description
🧮 Slow on Large Datasets Every prediction computes distance to all training points
❄️ Sensitive to Noise Outliers can distort predictions
📊 Requires Feature Scaling Distance metrics require normalization (e.g., MinMax)
💡 Curse of Dimensionality Doesn’t work well in high-dimensional spaces
🧠 When to Use / Not Use
Use KNN When... Avoid KNN When...
You have small to medium dataset Your data has many irrelevant features
Decision boundary is nonlinear You care about runtime efficiency
Data is clean and not high-dimensional Dataset is large or sparse
💡 How It Handles High-Dimensional Data
Poorly. As dimensions increase:
Distances between points become less meaningful
All points start looking equally distant
Model performance degrades
📌 Use dimensionality reduction (e.g., PCA, LDA) before KNN!
🧮 Complexity
Aspect Complexity
Training O(1) (no training!)
Aspect Complexity
Prediction O(n ⋅ d) — n: train samples, d: features
Space O(n ⋅ d)
⚙️ Tips for Using KNN
Always scale your features using MinMaxScaler or StandardScaler
Use GridSearchCV to choose best value of K
If class distribution is imbalanced, use distance-weighted voting
🧪 Try Distance Weighting in sklearn
python Copy Edit
KNeighborsClassifier(n_neighbors=5, weights='distance')
Would you like the visual explanation of KNN (with 2D plots) or how to tune K using cross-
validation next?
Or want to continue to Naive Bayes or SVM in the same style?
