The reader of analytical journals will discover that increasing reference is made to publications in which operational techniques derived from information science are applied. One of these methods is pattern recognition. The customary application of this procedure in chemistry is for the identification of substances in a compilation of substance properties (usually spectroscopic data).
In their book Juvs and Isenhour give a survey of the principles of pattern recognition and how it can be applied in chemistry. As "chemical criteria" they use, inter alia, mass spectra, IR spectra, and also electrochemical data, the latter in some cases in combination with mass spectra, IR spectra, boiling and melting points, and so on. On a very extensive series of substances they demonstrate the results that can thus be achieved. Each chapter concludes with a literature review.
It would undoubtedly be very useful for the chemist to have an intelligible book on pattern recognition tailored to the chemical mode of thinking, for the analyst at least will be obliged in the foreseeable future to familiarize himself with this procedure and its possible applications. However, the authors have to a very large extent retained the language of information science, so that the book is very difficult to read, at least for chemists trained in German-language countries. However, there is also another problem that arises once again: namely, what was long a simple matter becomes unintelligible when presented in the formalism of information science!
Egon Fahr [NB 299 IE] Instrumental Methods of Analysis.