Statistical Pattern Recognition
Chapter One
Introduction to statistical pattern
recognition
Overview
Statistical pattern recognition is a term used to cover all stages of an investigation
from problem formulation and data collection through to discrimination and classification,
assessment of results and interpretation. Some of the basic terminology
is introduced and two complementary approaches to discrimination described.
1.1 Statistical pattern recognition
1.1.1 Introduction
This book describes basic pattern recognition procedures, together with practical applications
of the techniques on real-world problems. A strong emphasis is placed on the
statistical theory of discrimination, but clustering also receives some attention. Thus,
the subject matter of this book can be summed up in a single word: 'classification',
both supervised (using class information to design a classifier - i.e. discrimination) and
unsupervised (allocating to groups without class information - i.e. clustering).
Pattern recognition as a field of study developed significantly in the 1960s. It was
very much an interdisciplinary subject, covering developments i ... read full excerpt from Statistical Pattern Recognition ebook
