k-Nearest Neighbors

Also known as KNN

Ask about this topic

Overview

k-Nearest Neighbors methods make predictions or retrieve examples by comparing a query with nearby observations, supporting classification, regression, clustering, and graph learning. Approaches include fixed or weighted neighbor sets, adaptive neighborhood sizes and radii, learned or geometry-aware distances, neighborhood graphs, conformal uncertainty estimates, and exact or approximate search indexes. Research studies consistency and convergence under settings such as dependent data, and evaluates methods on image, graph, time-series, and high-dimensional embedding tasks. A central challenge is that neighborhood quality depends on the representation and distance, especially in high dimensions, while speed, robustness, and reliable uncertainty can call for different design choices.

Latest papers

CardsList

34 papers9 papers in the last four weeks, up 125% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. A quantum k-nearest neighbors implementation using magnitude-aware comparisons

    Oct 24, 2026Christopher Rector, Jiangwen Sunk-Nearest NeighborsQuantum Machine Learning

    Computer Science, Old Dominion University, 1 Old Dominion University, Norfolk, 23529, VA, United States of America.

  2. Inference-Time Prior Adaptation for Imbalanced Data Streams under Concept Drift

    Oct 23, 2026Tobias Callies, Eirini Ntoutsi, Arthur ZimekClassificationConcept Drift

    University of the Bundeswehr Munich · University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Munich, Germany · University of Southern Denmark +1

  3. Beyond the Vote: When Do LLMs Add Value to Retrieval-Based Tabular Classification?

    Oct 21, 2026Ziquan Wang, Yuxuan Nie, Jian Ma +1Tabular ICLRetrieval-Augmented ICL

    Hangzhou International Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou, China · Peking University, Beijing, China

  4. CertEx: Exact Visual Retrieval at Scale by Certified Exclusion

    Oct 15, 2026Dongfang ZhaoExact Nearest Neighbor Searchk-Nearest Neighbors

    University of Washington, Tacoma School of Engineering and Technology

  5. Refined Topology-Pass Scheduling: Damped Trust-Region Compensation for Dynamic k-NN Graphs in SE(3)-Equivariant Structure Prediction

    Oct 13, 2026Jiankai Huang, Hanwen ShenProtein Structure Predictionk-Nearest Neighbors

  6. KNN Implementation Details Can Dramatically Change Performance: An Example from Cover Trees

    Oct 12, 2026Amol Khanna, Edward RaffExact Nearest Neighbor Searchk-Nearest Neighbors

    CrowdStrike · University of Maryland, Baltimore County · Syracuse University

  7. One-Layer Transformers Provably Learn In-Context K-Nearest Neighbor Prediction with Chain-of-Thought

    Oct 12, 2026Lyumin Wu, Yuan CaoTransformerIn-Context Learning

    School of Computing & Data Science, The University of Hong Kong

  8. Round-Trip KNN Clustering: multiscale hierarchical cluster detection on directed nearest-neighbour graphs

    Oct 5, 2026Eraldo Pereira Marinho, Caetano Mazzoni Ranieri, Fabricio Aparecido BreveClusteringHierarchical Clustering

    Department of Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Computing, S˜ao Paulo State University (UNESP), Institute of Geosciences and Exact Sciences, Av. 24-A, 1515, Rio Claro, S˜ao Paulo, Brazil.

  9. Nearest-neighbour baselines for fingerprint prediction from MS/MS spectra under different assumptions

    Sep 30, 2026Ling Min Serena Khook-Nearest NeighborsMass Spectrometry

    MIT

  10. Investigating the Effect of k-NN Preprocessing on Developing Graph Neural Networks: A Fairness-Based Perspective

    Sep 27, 2026Nikolaos Zafeiropoulos, Emmanouil Mavrikos, George E. TsekourasGraph Neural NetworksAlgorithmic Fairness

    Department of Cultural Technology and Communication University of the Aegean Mytilene, Greece

  11. Counting and Covering in Nearest-Neighbour Representations of Boolean Functions

    Sep 19, 2026Martin AnthonyVC DimensionPrototype-Based Classification

    Department of Mathematics London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

  12. QGB-WkkNN: Quantum Granular-Ball Learning for Robust Classification

    Sep 5, 2026Suzhen Yuan, Dehang Chen, Lifeng Shen +2k-Nearest NeighborsQuantum Machine Learning

    School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, 400065, China +2

  13. One-Layer Transformer Provably Learns Multiclass One-Nearest Neighbor in Context

    Sep 1, 2026Skanda Athreya, Yutong WangTransformerIn-Context Learning

    James B. Conant High School · Hoffman Estates, IL · Illinois Institute of Technology +1

  14. Curvature-Aware Radius Shrinkage for Adaptive Nearest Neighbor Classification

    Aug 27, 2026Alexandre L. M. Levadak-Nearest Neighbors

    Computing Department Federal University of São Carlos 13565-905, São Carlos-SP, Brazil

  15. Adaptive kk Nearest Neighbors Classifier via Granular Ball Computing

    Aug 13, 2026Xiaoyu Lian, Shuyin Xia, Hongxuan He +3k-Nearest Neighbors

    Chongqing Key Laboratory of Computational Intelligence, Key Laboratory of Cyberspace Big Data Intelligent Security, Ministry of Education, Sichuan-Chongqing Co-construction Key Laboratory of Digital Economy Intelligence and Key Laboratory of Big Data Intelligent Computing, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 400065, Chongqing, China · College of Computer and Information Science, the National Center for Applied Mathematics in Chongqing, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 401331, China

  16. Adapting Evidential Neural Networks to Test-Time Neighbor Fusion Improves Molecular Property Prediction

    Jul 13, 2026Cameron Gruich, Weichi Yao, Yixin Wang +1Evidential Deep LearningBayesian Inference

    Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2136, USA · Department of Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1107 USA

  17. Exact and Certified Data Shapley for Weighted k-Nearest-Neighbor Regression and Soft-Label Prediction

    Jul 12, 2026Zongye LyuShapley Value Attributionk-Nearest Neighbors

    Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia

  18. Near-Exponential Convergence Rates for kNN Classification based on Boltzmann Margin

    Jun 9, 2026Luyuan Yang, Shayan Shafaei, Chao LanClassificationk-Nearest Neighbors

    School of Computer Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA

  19. kk-Nearest Neighbors in Gromov--Wasserstein Space

    Jun 9, 2026Kaitlyn Hohmeier, Nicolas Fraiman, Caroline MoosmuellerGraph Classificationk-Nearest Neighbors

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Mathematics · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Statistics and Operations Research

  20. Fast Exact Nearest-Neighbor Learning for High-Frequency Financial Time Series

    Jun 8, 2026Henry Han, Diane LiQuantitative FinanceEfficient Inference

    Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Innovation Laboratory, School of Engineering and Computer Science, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798, USA · Department of Business, Management and Accounting, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, USA

  21. Interpolation between Convolution and Attention via K-Nearest Neighbors

    May 31, 2026Mingi KangSelf-AttentionConvolutional Neural Networks

    Bowdoin College

  22. Nearest-Neighbor Radii under Dependent Sampling

    May 14, 2026Yuanyuan Gao, Yilong Hou, Zhexiao Link-Nearest Neighbors

    Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA · Department of Biostatistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA

  23. Leveraging Data Symmetries to Select an Optimal Subset of Training Data under Label Noise

    May 3, 2026Kumar Shubham, Pavan Karjol, Kiran M K +1Training Data SelectionLearning with Noisy Labels

    Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

  24. High-dimensional Semi-supervised Classification via the Fermat Distance

    Apr 26, 2026Ruoxu Tan, Yiming ZangMultidimensional Scalingk-Nearest Neighbors

    School of Mathematical Sciences and School of Economics and Management, Tongji University · Department of Sciences, North China University of Technology

  25. 2L-LSH: A Locality-Sensitive Hash Function-Based Method For Rapid Point Cloud Indexing

    Apr 23, 2026Shurui Wang, Yuhe Zhang, Ruizhe Guo +3k-Nearest NeighborsApproximate Nearest Neighbor Search

    School of Information Science and Technology, Northwest University, Xi’an, PR China

  26. (Weighted) Adaptive Radius Near Neighbor Search: Evaluation for WiFi Fingerprint-based Positioning

    Apr 17, 2026Khang Le, Joaquín Torres-Sospedra, Philipp MüllerWireless Localizationk-Nearest Neighbors

    Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland · Department of Computer Science, University of Valencia,% ValgrAI, Valencia, Spain · Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

  27. Consistency of the kk-Nearest Neighbor Regressor under Complex Survey Designs

    Mar 18, 2026Caren Haslerk-Nearest NeighborsNonparametric Regression

  28. Learnability with Partial Labels and Adaptive Nearest Neighbors

    Mar 16, 2026Nicolas A. Errandonea, Santiago Mazuelas, Jose A. Lozano +1Statistical Learning Theoryk-Nearest Neighbors

    Basque Center for Applied Mathematics, Bilbao, Spain · Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science · University of the Basque Country, Spain +1

  29. Incremental Graph Construction Enables Robust Spectral Clustering of Texts

    Mar 3, 2026Marko Pranjić, Boshko Koloski, Nada Lavrač +2Text ClusteringClustering

    Joˇzef Stefan Institute and International Postgraduate School, Ljubljana, Slovenia. · University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

  30. TRAKNN: Efficient Trajectory Aware Spatiotemporal kNN for Rare Meteorological Trajectory Detection

    Mar 2, 2026Guillaume Coulaud, Davide Farandak-Nearest NeighborsAnomaly Detection

    UM, IROKO · University of Montpellier, Inria, CNRS, LIRMM, Montpellier, France · LMD, LSCE, ESTIMR +3