K-Means Clustering using PySpark Python Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025 Comments Improve Suggest changes Like Article Like Report In this tutorial series, we are going to cover K-Means Clustering using Pyspark. K-means is a clustering algorithm that groups data points into K distinct clusters based on their similarity. It is an unsupervised learning technique that is widely used in data mining, machine learning, and pattern recognition. The algorithm works by iteratively assigning data points to a cluster based on their distance from the cluster's centroid and then recomputing the centroid of each cluster. The process continues until the clusters' centroids converge or a maximum number of iterations is reached. K-means is simple, efficient, and effective in finding the optimal clusters for a given dataset, making it a popular choice for various applications. So, a typical clustering problem looks like this: Cluster Similar DocumentsCluster Customers based on FeaturesIdentify similar physical groupsMarket Segmentation We'll be working with a real data set about seeds, from the UCI repository: https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/236/seeds Task: We have seven geometrical parameters of wheat kernels and we have to group them into three different varieties of wheat: Kama, Rosa, and Canadian. Step 1: Starting the PySpark serverĀ Python3 from pyspark.sql import SparkSession spark = SparkSession.builder.appName('cluster').getOrCreate() print('Spark Version: {}'.format(spark.version)) Output: Spark Version: 3.3.1Step 2: Load the dataset Python3 #Loading the data dataset = spark.read.csv("seeds_dataset.csv",header=True,inferSchema=True) #show the data in the above file using the below command dataset.show(5) Output: +-----+---------+-----------+-----------------+---------------+---------------------+-----------------------+ | Area|Perimeter|Compactness|Length_of_ kernel|Width_of_kernel|Asymmetry_coefficient|Length_of_kernel_groove| +-----+---------+-----------+-----------------+---------------+---------------------+-----------------------+ |15.26| 14.84| 0.871| 5.763| 3.312| 2.221| 5.22| |14.88| 14.57| 0.8811| 5.554| 3.333| 1.018| 4.956| |14.29| 14.09| 0.905| 5.291| 3.337| 2.699| 4.825| |13.84| 13.94| 0.8955| 5.324| 3.379| 2.259| 4.805| |16.14| 14.99| 0.9034| 5.658| 3.562| 1.355| 5.175| +-----+---------+-----------+-----------------+---------------+---------------------+-----------------------+ only showing top 5 rowsPrint schema Python3 #Print schema dataset.printSchema() Output: root |-- Area: double (nullable = true) |-- Perimeter: double (nullable = true) |-- Compactness: double (nullable = true) |-- Length_of_ kernel: double (nullable = true) |-- Width_of_kernel: double (nullable = true) |-- Asymmetry_coefficient: double (nullable = true) |-- Length_of_kernel_groove: double (nullable = true)Step 3: Ā Format the data using Vector Assembler into vectors which will be used as "features" Python3 from pyspark.ml.feature import VectorAssembler vec_assembler = VectorAssembler(inputCols = dataset.columns, outputCol='features') final_data = vec_assembler.transform(dataset) final_data.select('features').show(5) Output: +--------------------+ | features| +--------------------+ |[15.26,14.84,0.87...| |[14.88,14.57,0.88...| |[14.29,14.09,0.90...| |[13.84,13.94,0.89...| |[16.14,14.99,0.90...| +--------------------+ only showing top 5 rowsStep 4: Scaling the data It is a good idea to scale our data to deal with the curse of dimensionality. Python3 from pyspark.ml.feature import StandardScaler scaler = StandardScaler(inputCol="features", outputCol="scaledFeatures", withStd=True, withMean=False) # Compute summary statistics by fitting the StandardScaler scalerModel = scaler.fit(final_data) # Normalize each feature to have unit standard deviation. final_data = scalerModel.transform(final_data) final_data.select('scaledFeatures').show(5) Output: +--------------------+ | scaledFeatures| +--------------------+ |[5.24452795332028...| |[5.11393027165175...| |[4.91116018695588...| |[4.75650503761158...| |[5.54696468981581...| +--------------------+ only showing top 5 rowsStep 5: Find the number of clusters using Silhouette Score Python3 #Importing the model from pyspark.ml.clustering import KMeans from pyspark.ml.evaluation import ClusteringEvaluator silhouette_score=[] evaluator = ClusteringEvaluator(predictionCol='prediction', featuresCol='scaledFeatures', \ metricName='silhouette', distanceMeasure='squaredEuclidean') for i in range(2,10): kmeans=KMeans(featuresCol='scaledFeatures', k=i) model=kmeans.fit(final_data) predictions=model.transform(final_data) score=evaluator.evaluate(predictions) silhouette_score.append(score) print('Silhouette Score for k =',i,'is',score) Output: Silhouette Score for k = 2 is 0.6650046039315017 Silhouette Score for k = 3 is 0.5928460025426588 Silhouette Score for k = 4 is 0.44804230341047074 Silhouette Score for k = 5 is 0.47760014315974747 Silhouette Score for k = 6 is 0.42900353119793194 Silhouette Score for k = 7 is 0.4419918246535933 Silhouette Score for k = 8 is 0.395868387829853 Silhouette Score for k = 9 is 0.40541652397305605Plot the Silhouette Score graph Python3 #Visualizing the silhouette scores in a plot import matplotlib.pyplot as plt plt.plot(range(2,10),silhouette_score) plt.xlabel('k') plt.ylabel('silhouette score') plt.title('Silhouette Score') plt.show() Output: Silhouette Score Ā Since there is no definitive answer as to what value of K is an acceptable value.Ā I wantĀ to move forward with k = 3 Where a local maximum of Silhouette Score is detected. Step 6: Train the Model Python3 # Trains a k-means model. kmeans = KMeans(featuresCol='scaledFeatures',k=3) model = kmeans.fit(final_data) predictions = model.transform(final_data) Print cluster centers Python3 # Printing cluster centers centers = model.clusterCenters() print("Cluster Centers: ") for center in centers: print(center) Output: Cluster Centers: [ 4.96198582 10.97871333 37.30930808 12.44647267 8.62880781 1.80062386 10.41913733] [ 6.35645488 12.40730852 37.41990178 13.93860446 9.7892399 2.41585309 12.29286107] [ 4.07497225 10.14410142 35.89816849 11.80812742 7.54416916 3.15411286 10.38031464]Showing the result of groupings: Python3 predictions.select('prediction').show(5) Output: +----------+ |prediction| +----------+ | 0| | 0| | 0| | 0| | 0| +----------+ only showing top 5 rowsEnd Session Python3 #End Session spark.stop() Ā Comment More infoAdvertise with us Next Article Introduction to Machine Learning S sachin7221 Follow Improve Article Tags : Machine Learning AI-ML-DS ML-Clustering python Python-Pyspark +1 More Practice Tags : Machine Learningpython Similar Reads Machine Learning Tutorial Machine learning is a branch of Artificial Intelligence that focuses on developing models and algorithms that let computers learn from data without being explicitly programmed for every task. 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