001/** 
002 * Copyright (c) 2007-2008, Regents of the University of Colorado 
003 * All rights reserved.
004 * 
005 * Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
006 * modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
007 * 
008 * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 
009 * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 
010 * Neither the name of the University of Colorado at Boulder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. 
011 * 
012 * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS"
013 * AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
014 * IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
015 * ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE
016 * LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
017 * CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
018 * SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
019 * INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
020 * CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
021 * ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
022 * POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 
023 */
024package org.cleartk.ml;
025
026import java.util.List;
027import java.util.Map;
028
029/**
030 * <br>
031 * Copyright (c) 2007-2008, Regents of the University of Colorado <br>
032 * All rights reserved.
033 * 
034 * <p>
035 * 
036 * This class provides an abstraction for interfacing with various ML learning libraries such as
037 * Mallet, Libsvm, OpenNLP Maxent, etc. Each subclass must override the abstract methods
038 * (naturally!) each of which is documented below. Each subclass must also be able to be
039 * instantiated from a single jar file that contains all the necessary meta-data and data (e.g. the
040 * model). The contents of the jar file will vary for each implementation. However, each jar file
041 * should have a manifest file with two attributes, "returnType" and "classifier". The jar command
042 * can be used to set the manifest of a jar file. A manifest file should look something like this:
043 * 
044 * <pre>
045 *  Manifest-Version: 1.0
046 *  classifier: org.cleartk.ml.OpenNLPMaxentClassifier
047 *  returnType: string
048 * </pre>
049 * 
050 * @author Philipp Wetzler
051 * @author Philip Ogren
052 * @author Steven Bethard
053 */
054
055public interface Classifier<OUTCOME_TYPE> {
056  /**
057   * Classifies a list of features.
058   * 
059   * @param features
060   *          a list of features to be classified
061   * @return the classification made
062   */
063  public OUTCOME_TYPE classify(List<Feature> features) throws CleartkProcessingException;
064
065  /**
066   * Classify a list of features, and return the scores for each of the outcomes
067   * 
068   * @param features
069   *          a list of features to be classified
070   * @return a map from outcomes to classification scores
071   */
072  public Map<OUTCOME_TYPE, Double> score(List<Feature> features) throws CleartkProcessingException;
073}