K Nearest Neighbors (KNN) is a supervised machine learning method that "memorizes" (stores) an entire dataset, then relies on the concepts of proximity and similarity to make predictions about new data. The basic idea is that if a new data point is in some sense "close" to existing data points, its value is likely to be similar to the values of its neighbors. In the Earth Systems Sciences, such techniques can be useful for small- to moderate-scale classification and regression problems.
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