SCENT is simple competitive neural network model
that evolves a tree structured set of nodes in response to
being presented with an unlabelled data set. The
resulting set of weight vectors and their relationship can
be viewed as giving a hierarchical classification of the
training data. This paper examines the nature of this
classification for two data sets over several runs of the
network. The first data set is a set of grey scale images,
chosen because the code-vectors produced by SCENT
can then be visualised in a natural way. The second
data set is a small set of vectors coding attributes of
animals. The resulting taxonomy from SCENT can
then be compared with the normal taxonomic groups
that such a set of animals would fall into. Since the
SCENT model is stochastic different runs produce
different trees, but the variation in results produced over
several runs is small. The model is shown to be
reasonably robust and the relationship between the
nature of the data and the type of tree produced is
examined.