Automatic classification is the algorithmic categorization of objects. It consists in assigning a class or category to each object (or individual) to classify, based on statistical data. It is commonly used for machine learning and is widely used in pattern recognition. The automatic classification aims at creating these categories from processes involving only the data and not involving the experimenter’s subjectivity (apart from the choice of representations that he uses, which has implications).
Although the first bases of the algorithmic approach of the automatic classification are relatively old, it is only with the development of the computing that it became possible to implement them on large data samples. The result of a classification is usually a partition or hierarchy.