6 CHAPTER 1.INTRODUCTION that takes a new data point and produces a prediction of its population The three examples above are just a small sample of the uses of classification.Given these preliminaries,this paper will examine various methods of classification,starting with linear discrim- inant analysis and Fisher's discriminant analysis,to Support Vector Machines(SVMs).Our work will conclude with an analysis of the linear classifiers and SVMs applied to an actual data set.6 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION that takes a new data point and produces a prediction of its population The three examples above are just a small sample of the uses of classification. Given these preliminaries, this paper will examine various methods of classification, starting with linear discrim￾inant analysis and Fisher’s discriminant analysis, to Support Vector Machines (SVMs). Our work will conclude with an analysis of the linear classifiers and SVMs applied to an actual data set