Pattern recognition combats data explosion
Chemical & Engineering News · 1972
Systematic methods of determining which of millions of chemical candidates would actually perform as miracle drugs, or as catalysts for industrial reactions, or for many other applications have been sorely lacking. In the cancer field alone, at least half a million compounds have been tested for anticancer activity in order to find a few that work, since the screening system has amounted mainly to a methodical testing of almost everything in sight. Pattern recognition techniques may offer one way for the chemist to escape the tidal waves of data with which he is being inundated by modern instrumentation as he conducts such screening operations as well as other chemical research problems. The goal of pattern recognition is to detect or predict obscure but perhaps highly desirable properties of substances by discerning patterns among seemingly unrelated or very indirect and multitudinous data. A good way of accomplishing that goal, according to a number of ...