New Approaches In Classification And Data Analysis

The subject of this book is the analysis and processing of structural or quantitative data with emphasis on classification methods, new algorithms as well as applications in various fields related to data analysis and classification. The book presents the state of the art in world-wide research and application of methods from the fields indicated above and consists of survey papers as well as research papers.

In science, industry, public administration and documentation centers large amounts of data and information are collected which must be analyzed, ordered, visualized, classified and stored efficiently in order to be useful for practical applications. This volume contains 50 selected theoretical and applied papers presenting a wealth of new and innovative ideas, methods, models and systems which can be used for this purpose. It combines papers and strategies from two main streams of research in an interdisciplinary, dynamic and exciting way: On the one hand, mathematical and statistical methods are described which allow a quantitative analysis of data, provide strategies for classifying objects or making exploratory searches for interesting structures, and give ways to make comprehensive graphical displays of large arrays of data. On the other hand, papers related to information sciences, informatics and data bank systems provide powerful tools for representing, modelling, storing and retrieving facts, data and knowledge characterized by qualitative descriptors, semantic relations, or linguistic concepts. The integration of both fields and a special part on applied problems from biology, medicine, archeology, industry and administration assure that this volume will be informative and useful for theory and practice.

The volume presents new developments in data analysis and classification. Particular attention is devoted to clustering, discrimination, data analysis and statistics, as well as applications in biology, finance and social sciences. The reader will find theory and algorithms on recent technical and methodological developments and many application papers showing the empirical usefulness of the newly developed solutions.

This volume contains selected papers covering a wide range of topics, including theoretical and methodological advances relating to data gathering, classification and clustering, exploratory and multivariate data analysis, and knowledge seeking and discovery. The result is a broad view of the state of the art, making this an essential work not only for data analysts, mathematicians, and statisticians, but also for researchers involved in data processing at all stages from data gathering to decision making.

"Data Analysis" in the broadest sense is the general term for a field of activities of ever-increasing importance in a time called the information age. It covers new areas with such trendy labels as, e.g., data mining or web mining as well as traditional directions emphazising, e.g., classification or knowledge organization. Leading researchers in data analysis have contributed to this volume and delivered papers on aspects ranging from scientific modeling to practical application. They have devoted their latest contributions to a book edited to honor a colleague and friend, Hans-Hermann Bock, who has been active in this field for nearly thirty years.

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the Seven~h Confer ence of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS-2000), which was held in Namur, Belgium, July 11-14,2000. From the originally sub mitted papers, a careful review process involving two reviewers per paper, led to the selection of 65 papers that were considered suitable for publication in this book. The present book contains original research contributions, innovative ap plications and overview papers in various fields within data analysis, classifi cation, and related methods. Given the fast publication process, the research results are still up-to-date and coincide with their actual presentation at the IFCS-2000 conference. The topics captured are: • Cluster analysis • Comparison of clusterings • Fuzzy clustering • Discriminant analysis • Mixture models • Analysis of relationships data • Symbolic data analysis • Regression trees • Data mining and neural networks • Pattern recognition • Multivariate data analysis • Robust data analysis • Data science and sampling The IFCS (International Federation of Classification Societies) The IFCS promotes the dissemination of technical and scientific information data analysis, classification, related methods, and their applica concerning tions.

This volume presents recent methodological developments in data analysis and classification. It covers a wide range of topics, including methods for classification and clustering, dissimilarity analysis, consensus methods, conceptual analysis of data, and data mining and knowledge discovery in databases. The book also presents a wide variety of applications, in fields such as biology, micro-array analysis, cyber traffic, and bank fraud detection.