Classification - Definition and Overview

Classification may refer to:

• Taxonomic classification, the act of placing an object or concept into a set of categories (such as a taxonomy or a subject index), based on the properties of the object or concept. A person may classify the object or concept according to an ontology. Confusingly, such a classification may be referred to as "statistical" (see below), if its purpose is to compute statistics over objects or concepts. Examples of taxonomic classification include:
  • Library classification
  • Scientific classification of organisms.
  • Classification of finite simple groups
  • Medical classification like ICD
  • Security classification

• Statistical classification, a type of statistical algorithm which takes a feature representation of an object or concept and maps it to a classification label. A classification algorithm is designed to learn (to approximate the behavior of) a function which maps a vector of features [X1,X2,...XN] into one of several classes by looking at several input-output examples of the function. See also machine learning, supervised learning. Examples of these algorithms include:
  • Boosting
  • Decision trees
  • Logistic regression
  • Naive Bayes classifier
  • Neural networks
  • Support vector machines