CLASSIFICATION DECISIONS IN PATTERN RECOGNITION
Abstract
The basic element in the solution of pattern-recognition problems is the requirement for the ability to recognize membership in classes. This report considers the automatic establishment of decision criteria for measuring membership in classes that are known only from a finite set of samples. Each sample is represented by a point in a suitably chosen, finite-dimensional vector space in which a class orrespon to a domain that contains its samples. Boundaries of the domain in the vector space can be expressed analytically with the aid of transformations that cluster samples of a class and separate classes from one another. From these geometrical notions a generalized discriminant analysis is developed which, as the sample size goes to infinity, lea s to decision-making that is consistent with the results of statistical decision theory. A number of special cases of varying complexity are worked out. These differ from one another partly in the manner in which the operation of clustering samples of a class and the separation of classes is formulated as a mathematical problem, and partly in the complexity of transformations of the vector space which is permitted during the solution of the problem. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 25, 1960
- Accession Number
- AD0260232
Entities
People
- George S. Sebestyen
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology