This volume, Data Science, Classification, and Related Methods, contains
a selection of papers presented at the Fifth Conference of the
International Federation of Oassification Societies (IFCS-96), which was
held in Kobe, Japan, from March 27 to 30,1996. The volume covers a wide
range of topics and perspectives in the growing field of data science,
including theoretical and methodological advances in domains relating to
data gathering, classification and clustering, exploratory and
multivariate data analysis, and knowledge discovery and seeking. It
gives a broad view of the state of the art and is intended for those in
the scientific community who either develop new data analysis methods or
gather data and use search tools for analyzing and interpreting large
and complex data sets. Presenting a wide field of applications, this
book is of interest not only to data analysts, mathematicians, and
statisticians but also to scientists from many areas and disciplines
concerned with complex data: medicine, biology, space science,
geoscience, environmental science, infonnation science, image and
pattern analysis, economics, statistics, social sciences, psychology,
cognitive science, behavioral science, marketing and survey research,
data mining, and knowledge organization.