classification society

1. Shipping: Organization devoted to surveying of new and old ships for award of appropriate rating about its seaworthiness evaluated according to published rules and standards. Lloyd's Register (established since 1760 in London) was the world's first shipping classification society. Other major seafaring nations now have their own societies, such as the American Bureau Of Shipping (USA), Bureau Veritas (France), Det Norsk Veritas (Norway), and Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (Japan).

2. Statistics: Organization devoted to research in classification and clustering of data to develop better mathematical techniques for data mining and other such uses.