Classification in machine learning and statistics, is the problem of identifying to which of a set of categories (sub-populations) a new observation belongs, on the basis of a training set of data containing observations (or instances) whose category membership is known. Classification is an example of pattern recognition. In the terminology of machine learning, classification is considered an instance of supervised learning, i.e. learning where a training set of correctly identified observations is available. The corresponding unsupervised procedure is known as clustering and involves grouping data into categories based on some measure of inherent similarity or distance. Often, the individual observations are analyzed into a set of quantifiable properties, known variously as explanatory variables or features. These properties may variously be categorical (e.g. “A”, “B”, “AB” or “O”, for blood type), ordinal (e.g. “large”, “medium” or “small”), integer-valued (e.g. the number of occurrences of a particular word in an email) or real-valued (e.g. a measurement of blood pressure). Other classifiers work by comparing observations to previous observations by means of a similarity or distance function. An algorithm that implements classification, especially in a concrete implementation, is known as a classifier.
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