Self-organization of non-numeric data sets

A topology-preserving map can be constructed by simulated annealing. This map shares some useful properties with those generated by classical self-organization, but it does not require that the input data have numeric values. An application to mail routing is presented, showing that self-organization can be accomplished given only a local adjacency list. A string-matching application shows the extension of the algorithm to cases where a scalar distance between input points is available. The map in the latter application, like a Kohonen map, exhibits local smoothness permitting shortcuts to the nearest-neighbor search