approximate nearest neighbor

Definition

Fast lookup that finds something close to what you're looking for, trading exactness for speed.

A family of indexing algorithms that retrieve approximately closest vectors under a distance metric, used in vector databases and semantic search.

Also called: ANN, nearest neighbor

Mentioned in 2 episodes

1. 042
   An Agentic Scientific Computing System That Actually Remembers What It Learns
2. 036
   Sparse Attention Was the Wrong Frame. Treat It as Geometry Instead.