Demonstrates that the process of comparing each document in an automated system with all others during the classification procedure may be avoided by the use of an inverted file. (FM)

The major advantage of sequential classification, a technique for automatically classifying documents into previously selected categories, is that the entire document need not be processed before it is classified. This method assumes the availability of a priori categories, a selection of keywords representative of these categories, and the a…

The feasibility of using a distance measure, called the Bayesian distance, for automatic sequential document classification was studied. Results indicate that, by observing the variation of this distance measure as keywords are extracted sequentially from a document, the occurrence of noisy keywords may be detected. This property of the distance…