mineral association vs grouping

mineral association and grouping both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
mineral association	Yes	No	No	No
grouping	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, grouping is a hypernym of mineral association; that is, grouping is a word with a broader meaning than mineral association:

Other hypernyms of mineral association include group.

mineral association (noun)	grouping (noun)
minerals that can be found together in a rock.	any number of entities (members) considered as a unit
	the activity of putting things together in groups
	a system for classifying things into groups