Pattern unsupervised

Fig. 3. Types of pattern recognition techniques (a) preprocessing, (b) display, (c) unsupervised learning, and (d) supervisediearning.

Analytical results are often represented in a data table, e.g., a table of the fatty acid compositions of a set of olive oils. Such a table is called a two-way multivariate data table. Because some olive oils may originate from the same region and others from a different one, the complete table has to be studied as a whole instead as a collection of individual samples, i.e., the results of each sample are interpreted in the context of the results obtained for the other samples. For example, one may ask for natural groupings of the samples in clusters with a common property, namely a similar fatty acid composition. This is the objective of cluster analysis (Chapter 30), which is one of the techniques of unsupervised pattern recognition. The results of the clustering do not depend on the way the results have been arranged in the table, i.e., the order of the objects (rows) or the order of the fatty acids (columns). In fact, the order of the variables or objects has no particular meaning. 

D. Coomans and D.L. Massart, Potential methods in pattern recognition. Part 2. CLUPOT an unsupervised pattern recognition technique. Anal. Chim. Acta., 133 (1981) 225-239. 

Mathematically, this means that one needs to assign portions of an 8-dimensionaI space to the three classes. A new sample is then assigned to the class which occupies the portion of space in which the sample is located. Supervised pattern recognition is distinct from unsupervised pattern recognition. In the latter one applies essentially clustering methods (Chapter 30) to classify objects into classes that are not known beforehand. In supervised pattern recognition, one knows the classes and has to decide in which of those an object should be classified. 

In the following sections we propose typical methods of unsupervised learning and pattern recognition, the aim of which is to detect patterns in chemical, physicochemical and biological data, rather than to make predictions of biological activity. These inductive methods are useful in generating hypotheses and models which are to be verified (or falsified) by statistical inference. Cluster analysis has... 

While principal components models are used mostly in an unsupervised or exploratory mode, models based on canonical variates are often applied in a supervisory way for the prediction of biological activities from chemical, physicochemical or other biological parameters. In this section we discuss briefly the methods of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA). Although there has been an early awareness of these methods in QSAR [7,50], they have not been widely accepted. More recently they have been superseded by the successful introduction of partial least squares analysis (PLS) in QSAR. Nevertheless, the early pattern recognition techniques have prepared the minds for the introduction of modem chemometric approaches. 

Two examples of unsupervised classical pattern recognition methods are hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal components analysis (PCA). Unsupervised methods attempt to discover natural clusters within data sets. Both HCA and PCA cluster data. 

Inhomogeneities in data can be studied by cluster analysis. By means of cluster analysis both structures of objects and variables can be found without any pre-information on type and number of groupings (unsupervised learning, unsupervised pattern recognition). 

The two pattern recognition techniques used In this work are among those usually used for unsupervised learning. The results will be examined for the clusters which arise from the analysis of the data. On the other hand, the number of classes and a rule for assigning compounds to each had already been determined by the requirements of the mixture analysis problem. One might suppose that a supervised approach would be more suitable. In our case, this Is not so because our aim Is not to develop a classifier. Instead, we wish to examine the data base of FTIR spectra and the metric to see If they are adequate to help solve a more difficult problem, that of analyzing complex mixtures by class. 

In contras to unsupervised methods, supervised pattern-recognition methods (Section 4.3) use class membership information in the calculations. The goal of these methods is to construct models using analytical measurements to predict class membership of future samples. Class location and sometimes shape are used in the calibration step to construct the models. In prediction, these moddsare applied to the analytical measurements of unknowu samples to predict dsss membership. 

Pattern Recognition A process of examining the relationships between samples and/or variables in a data set. Unsupervised pattern-recognition tools are used to determine if there are groupings of similar samples in a data set. Supervised pattern-recognition tools are used to classify unknown samples as more likely of type A or type B. 

Supervised versus Unsupervised Pattern Recognition In some situations the class membership of the samples is unknown. For example, an analyst may simply want to examine a data set to see what can be learned. Are there any groupings of samples Are there any outliers (i.e., a small number of samples that are not grouped with the majority) Even if class information is known, the analyst may want to identify and display natural groupings in the data without imposing class membership on the samples. For example, assume a series of spectra have been collected and the goal is to... 

Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) is an unsupervised technique that examines the inteipoint distances between all of the samples and represents that information in the form of a twcKlimensional plot called a dendrogram. These dendrograms present the data from high-dimensional row spaces in a form that facilitates the use of human pattern-recognition abilities. 

The goal of unsupervised techniques is to identify and display natural groupings in the data without imposing any prior class membership. Even when the ultimate goal of the project is to develop a supervised pattern recognition model, we recommend the use of unsupervised techniques to provide an initial view of the data. 

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