Methods for Pattern Classification

Pattern classification is to classify some object into one of the given categories called classes. For a specific pattern classification problem, a classifier is computer software. It is developed so that objects ($x$) are classified correctly with reasonably good accuracy. Through training using input-output pairs, classifiers acquire decision functions that classify an input datum into one of the given classes ($w_i$). In pattern recognition applications we rarely if ever have the prior probability $P(w_i)$ or the class-conditional density $P(x | w_i)$ . of complete knowledge about the probabilistic structure of the problem. In a typical case, we merely have some vague, general knowledge about the situation, together with a number of design samples or training data - particular representatives of the patterns we want to classify training. The problem, then, is to find some way to use this information to design or data train the classifier. The organization of this chapter is to address those cases where a great deal of information about the models is known and to move toward problems where the form of the distributions is unknown, and even the category membership of training patterns is unknown. We begin in Bayes decision theory (Sec.2) by considering the ideal case in which the probability structure underlying the categories is known perfectly. In Sec.3 (Maximum Likelihood), we address the case when the full probability structure underlying the categories is not known, but the general forms of their distributions are the models. Thus the uncertainty about a probability distribution is represented by the values of some unknown parameters, and we seek to determine these parameters to attain the best categorization. In Sec.4 (Nonparametric techniques) we move yet further from the Bayesian ideal and assume that we have no prior parameterized knowledge about the underlying probability structure; in essence, our classification will be based on information provided by training samples alone. Classic techniques such as the nearest-neighbor algorithm and potential functions play an important role here. We then in Sec.5 (Support Vector Machine) Next, in Sec.6 (Nonlinear Discriminants and Neural Networks), we see how some of the ideas from such linear discriminants can be extended to a class of very powerful algorithms such as backpropagation and others for multilayer neural networks; these neural techniques have a range of useful properties that have made them a mainstay in contemporary pattern recognition research. In Sec.7 (Stochastic Methods), we discuss simulated annealing by the Boltzmann learning algorithm and other stochastic methods. We explore the behavior of such algorithms with regard to the matter of local minima that can plague other neural methods. Sec.8 (Unsupervised Learning and Clustering), by addressing the case when input training patterns are not labeled and that our recognizer must determine the cluster structure.

Source: Yizhang Guan, https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/10687
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