Application
Many applications exist that are efficiently implemented using hierarchical classifiers or variants thereof. The clearest example lies in the area of computer vision. Recognizing pictures is something that hierarchical processing can do well. The reason the model is so well fit to this application is that pictures can intuitively be viewed as a collection of components or objects. These objects can be viewed as collections of smaller components like shapes, which can be viewed as collections of lines, and so on. This coincides directly with the way hierarchical processing works. If a simple unit of the processing hierarchy can classify lines into shapes, then an equivalent unit could process shapes into objects (of course, there are some intermediate steps between these, but the idea is there). Thus, if you arrange these generic classifying units in a hierarchical fashion (using a directed acyclic graph), a full step-by-step classification can ensue from pixels of color all the way up to an abstract label of what is in the picture.
There are a lot of similar applications that can also be tackled by hierarchical classification such as written text recognition, robot awareness, etc. It is possible that mathematical models and problem solving methods can also be represented in this fashion. If this is the case, future research in this area could lead to very successful automated theorem provers across multiple domain. Such developments would be very powerful, but is yet unclear how exactly these models are applicable.
Read more about this topic: Hierarchical Classifier
Famous quotes containing the word application:
“We will not be imposed upon by this vast application of forces. We believe that most things will have to be accomplished still by the application called Industry. We are rather pleased, after all, to consider the small private, but both constant and accumulated, force which stands behind every spade in the field. This it is that makes the valleys shine, and the deserts really bloom.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Great abilites are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)