What is the time complexity of the K-means algorithm?

Practice Questions

Q1
What is the time complexity of the K-means algorithm?
  1. O(n^2)
  2. O(nk)
  3. O(n log n)
  4. O(n^3)

Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions

What is the time complexity of the K-means algorithm?
  • Step 1: Understand that K-means is an algorithm used to group data points into clusters.
  • Step 2: Identify the two main factors that affect the time it takes to run K-means: the number of data points (n) and the number of clusters (k).
  • Step 3: Realize that for each iteration of the K-means algorithm, we need to assign each data point to the nearest cluster center.
  • Step 4: This assignment step requires checking each of the n data points against each of the k clusters.
  • Step 5: Therefore, the time taken for this assignment step is O(nk).
  • Step 6: Note that K-means typically runs for multiple iterations until convergence, but the dominant factor in time complexity remains O(nk).
  • Step 7: Conclude that the overall time complexity of the K-means algorithm is O(nk).
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