Jenks natural breaks optimization

The Jenks - Caspall algorithm is a statistical technique for the automatic classification of values ​​based on so-called Natural Breaks ( about: natural discontinuities ), that is, an attempt is made to minimize the differences within a class and the differences between the classes. maximize The method was devised by George Frederick Jenks and Fred Caspall in the 60s of the 20th century.

It is used in two different steps, the large sum of the absolute deviations from the class of compounds is minimized by values ​​between the classes to be moved:

The algorithm is used for example in the geography for the classification of raster data or geographic information systems for classification. According to Jenks and Caspall it does not provide an optimal solution to the problem of Natural Breaks, but at the time of its release was the best thing they could find.