🌿 Taxonomy: The Science of Classification

Taxonomy is the science and practice of categorizing or classifying things based on discrete sets. It comes from the Greek words:

• 🔹 Taxis (meaning ‘order’ or ‘arrangement’)
• 🔹 Nomos (meaning ‘law’ or ‘science’)

A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a hierarchical system where entities are classified based on their properties.

📌 Taxonomy in Named Entity Recognition (NER)

In Named Entity Recognition (NER), taxonomic classification helps in recognizing and categorizing entities. Every entity belongs to a taxonomy based on its type.

For example, a geographical taxonomy:

• 🌍 Continent
• 🌎 Region
• 🏳️ Country
• 🏙️ City
• 🏘️ District
• 🛣️ Street

A Search Engine can use this taxonomy to:

• ✅ Recognize entities and their types from a document.
• ✅ Determine the document’s context.
• ✅ Compare the relevance and context of different documents using taxonomies.

🔎 Usage of Taxonomy in NER

• 1️⃣ Entity-Type Association: Entities of the same type or related hierarchical types help define the document’s context.
• 2️⃣ Entity Prominence: Taxonomies help search engines identify the central entity of a document.
• 3️⃣ Entity Relevance for Queries: Queries and related search activities can be better understood via taxonomies.
• 4️⃣ Document Context: A webpage’s purpose is clearer when analyzing entities and their hierarchical relationships.

If a document contains multiple entities of the same type with different hierarchical values, a search engine can:

• 🟢 Recognize related entities more effectively.
• 🟢 Cluster similar documents for contextual relevance.
• 🟢 Improve entity recognition across different sources.

A Natural Language Processing (NLP) Engineer or program can use taxonomies to:

• 🔗 Recognize related entities.
• 📄 Understand document context by analyzing hierarchical relations.
• 🕵️ Detect relationship types between entities.

🌍 Taxonomy Across Different Industries

Taxonomy is widely used in various fields, including:

• 🔬 Natural Sciences
  • 🧬 Alpha Taxonomy
  • 🦴 Evolutionary Taxonomy
  • 🌱 Folk Taxonomy
• 🏢 Business & Economics
  • 🏛️ Corporate Taxonomy
  • 📊 Economic Taxonomy
  • 🗂️ Records Management Taxonomy
• 💻 Other Fields
  • 🖥️ Computing
  • 📚 Education
  • 🏫 Academia
  • ⚠️ Safety & Military

Each industry applies taxonomy differently based on context, pattern, and logic.