Multisurface method of pattern separation

Let two sets of patterns be represented by two finite point sets in an
n
-dimensional Euclidean space
E^{n}
. If the convex hulls of the two sets do not intersect, the sets can be strictly separated by a plane. Such a plane can be constructed by the Motzkin-Schoenberg error-correction procedure or by linear programming. More often than not, however, the convex hulls of the two point sets do intersect, in which case strict separation by a plane is not possible any more. One may then resort to separation by more than one plane. In this paper, we show how two sets can be strictly separated by one or more planes or surfaces (nonlinear manifolds) via linear programming. A computer program that implements the present method has been written and successfully tested on a number of real problems.