What is anomaly detection?

Anomaly detection is the identification of rare items, events or observations which raise suspicions by differing significantly from the majority of the data. Typically, anomalous items will translate to some kind of problem such as bank fraud, a structural defect, medical problems or errors in text. It is commonly used in various fields like finance, cybersecurity, healthcare, and manufacturing to identify unusual patterns or outliers that could indicate potential risks, fraud, errors, or opportunities.