2966	 The Choice of Reference Poin ts in Best-Match File Searching	 Improvements to the exhaustive search method of best-match file searching have previously been achieved by doing a preprocessing step involving the calculation of distances from a reference poin t. This paper discusses the proper choice of reference poin ts and extends the previous algorithm to use more than one reference poin t. It is shown that reference poin ts should be located outside of data clusters. The results of computer simulations are presented which show that large improvements can be achieved by the proper choice and location of multiple reference poin ts. matching file searching best match nearest-neighbor classification
