In information science, formal concept analysis is a principled way of deriving a concept hierarchy or formal ontology from a collection of objects and their properties. Each concept in the hierarchy represents the set of objects sharing the same values for a certain set of properties; and each sub-concept in the hierarchy contains a subset of the objects in the concepts above it. The term was introduced by Rudolf Wille in 1984, and builds on applied lattice and order theory that was developed by Birkhoff and others in the 1930s.
Formal concept analysis finds practical application in fields including data mining, text mining, machine learning, knowledge management, semantic web, software development, and biology.
Read more about Formal Concept Analysis: Overview and History, Motivation and Philosophical Background
Famous quotes containing the words formal, concept and/or analysis:
“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of variety ... is but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety....”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but certain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)