Data analysis and information systems

This volume presents 45 articles dealing with theoretical aspects, methodo logical advances and practical applications in domains relating to classifica tion and clustering, statistical and computational data analysis, conceptual or terminological approaches for information systems, and knowledge struc tures for databases. These articles were selected from about 140 papers presented at the 19th Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft fur Klassifika tion, the German Classification Society. The conference was hosted by W. Polasek at the Institute of Statistics and Econometry of the University of 1 Basel (Switzerland) March 8-10, 1995 . The papers are grouped as follows, where the number in parentheses is the number of papers in the chapter. 1. Classification and clustering (8) 2. Uncertainty and fuzziness (5) 3. Methods of data analysis and applications (7) 4. Statistical models and methods (4) 5. Bayesian learning (5) 6. Conceptual classification, knowledge ordering and information systems (12) 7. Linguistics and dialectometry (4). These chapters are interrelated in many respects. The reader may recogni ze, for example, the analogies and distinctions existing among classification principles developed in such different domains as statistics and information sciences, the benefit to be gained by the comparison of conceptual and ma thematical approaches for structuring data and knowledge, and, finally, the wealth of practical applications described in many of the papers. For convenience of the reader, the content of this volume is briefly reviewed.