Prototype Classifiers and the Big Fish: The Case of Prototype (Instance) Selection

This article tells the story of our collaboration on prototype selection and what has happened since. In prototype classification, the data live in some metric space ℝⁿ equipped with a distance. Depending on which discipline or school (or continent) you come from, you may have a different name for the elements of ℝⁿ. In pattern recognition, we call those objects, data points, or even patterns. In machine learning, you are more likely to call them instances or examples. In statistics, we talk about observations and (the dubious singular -plural) samples.