Monothetic classification

Clearly, a complete classification of separations would require an accounting based on similarities and differences in many properties. In taxonomy, this would be termed a polythetic classification, as opposed to monothetic classifications based on only one property. Monothetic classifications are not necessarily erroneous—they are simply incomplete. In a complex field such as separations, many monothetic classifications exist, each one different, each with an element of validity, but each incomplete. 

Monothetic divisive clustering has largely been ignored, although there have been applications and development of a classification method closely related to monothetic divisive clustering. This classification is recursive partitioning, a type of decision tree method. 

Little has been reported on the use of hierarchical divisive methods for processing chemical data sets (other than the inclusion of the minimum-diameter method in some of the comparative studies mentioned above). Recursive partitioning, which is a supervised classification technique very closely related to monothetic divisive clustering, has, however, been used at the GlaxoSmithKline and Organon companies. 

---