About this website
The basic pattern recognition questions are short:
- How does knowledge grow from experience?
- How do we learn from examples?
- How do we convert a set of observations into concepts?
Answers grow and become clearer when we code them into routines and apply them to real world scenarios. We have done that for tens of years. In this amazing process we have discovered that such questions are related to the understanding of consciousness, ourselves and human relations, as well as collecting observations and gaining knowledge.
Here we will share what we have done and what our discoveries are. We want to make the tools available and show suitable examples. We want to make clear how interesting the questions are, both from the intellectual point of view as well as from the philosophical point of view. We realize that we are only able to vaguely sketch the road between building a pattern recognition system and understanding the human process of gaining knowledge.
Walk the road and it will become more manifestable and easy going for all of us!
About us
The initiative to this website was taken by Ela Pekalska and Bob (Robert P.W.) Duin. For many years we have worked together as well as with other colleagues, in research and teaching pattern recognition. We have worked on the creation of PRTools, the concept of dissimilarity representation and understanding the relation of pattern recognition and consciousness. The plan for this website was born after we both left our universities (Manchester in the UK, and Delft in the Netherlands).
About 37 Steps
Thinking about Pattern Recognition invites us to reflect on how we learn as humans. We believe that conscious actions and decisions are necessary for a personal growth as well as the understanding and use of research tools.
There are 19 steps in any conscious action. When we reflect back on them, the last step of the action and the first step of the analysis coincide. This leads to 19+18 = 37 steps which form a circle of Action and Reflection, necessary for learning. The full esoteric meaning of the number 37 can gradually be found after studying the various ways in which the number of 37 can be encountered. For instance, next to inspirations of the 37 steps the various interpretations of the magic 37 hexagon may be studied.
This site provides information, examples and tutorials as well as practical solutions to problems which require intelligent data analysis. You may use our services, such as the automatic data analysis report, without understanding of the details, but we encourage you to learn the foundations as well.
Be patient. Every learning takes time as it necessarily relies on the following steps:
- Information collection. (Data collection)
- Observation and thinking. (Visual inspection of the data.)
- Understanding and knowledge organization. (Problem understanding. Data representation. Selection of features or prototypes.)
- Action or practice. (Learning the discrimination function.)
- Experimentation. (Testing! Analyzing what needs a change. )
- Reflection. Drawing conclusions. (Summarizing the results. )
- Change or update. (Towards a better solution. )
We wish you an interesting journey into conscious learning from data and your own life.
Be inspired!
Ela and Bob
