@hackage som3.1

A Kohonen Self-organising Map (SOM) maps input patterns onto a regular grid (usually two-dimensional) where each node in the grid is a model of the input data, and does so using a method which ensures that any topological relationships within the input data are also represented in the grid. This implementation supports the use of non-numeric patterns.

In layman's terms, a SOM can be useful when you you want to discover the underlying structure of some data.

The userguide is available at https://github.com/mhwombat/som/wiki.

NOTE: Version 3.0 changed the order of parameters for many functions. This makes it easier for the user to write mapping and folding operations.