New approaches in classification and data analysis

Abstract

This volume provides the latest advancements in statistical methods formultidimen- sional data analysis which can have a complex structure and collects a selection of revised papers presented at the first Joint Meeting of the Société Francophone de Classification and the Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statis- tical Society (SFC-CLADAG 2008) which was held in Caserta, June 1113, 2008. Bernard Fichet and Domenico Piccolo co-chaired the Scientific Programme Com- mittee and Rosanna Verde chaired the Local Organising Committee. Themeeting brought together a large number of scientists and experts, especially from Italy and francophone countries. Itwas a highly appreciated opportunity of dis- cussion and mutual knowledge exchange about techniques and tools for analyzing, classifying and summarizing statistical information, as well as for discovering and characterizing trends, and for automatically bagging anomalies. Special attention was paid to new methodological contributions from both the theoretical and the applicative point of views, in the fields of Clustering, Classifica- tion, Time Series Analysis, Multidimensional Data Analysis, Knowledge Discovery from Large Datasets, Spatial Statistics. Upon conclusion of the joint meeting a cooperation agreement between the SFC and CLADAG was signed by Gilles Venturini, president of the SFC and Andrea Cerioli, president of CLADAG for a continuation of the scientific collaboration between the two groups around subjects related to the Classification and Multivari- ate Data Analysis. The volume is structured in nine sections. The first contains the key note speakers papers, with eminent contributions in Classification and Data Analysis fields in ple- nary and semi-plenary sessions, by Edwin Diday,Carlo Lauro, JacquelineMeulman, Paolo Giudici, André Hardy and Roberta Siciliano. The extended versions of some of their contributions were then written in collaboration with other colleagues.