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Classification is the assignment of objects to classes, e.g., of persons to social strata, or of patients to a nosological unit like ‘endogeneous depression.’ Usually, the classes have to be determined in a first step—often by cluster analysis—and are not ‘naturally given.’ The data may be descriptions of persons or objects with respect to their properties, or judged or derived measures of similarity. Procedures have to be found to assign each individual case to one of the classes. The classification as a system of sets as well as the success of identifying class membership have to be evaluated, e.g., by a method called ‘cross validation.’ This entry does not treat classification as a psychological or cognitive process, nor classification as used in applications of artificial intelligence, like in biometric authentification. |
