INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF CLASSIFICATION SOCIETIES NEWSLETTER Number 21, May 2001 President: Jean-Paul Rasson Editor: Paul De Boeck ----------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS From the President IFCS Elections Journal of Classification Information on IFCS-2002 CSNA’s Bibliographic Service - and Hartigan (1975) News from the member societies: - JCS - IPRCS - GfKl - SFC Conferences and meetings: - CSNA Annual Meeting - 25th Annual Conference of the GfKl - Proteomics, Genomics and Bioinformatics (GfKl) - SFC Meeting in Guadeloupe - EMPG 2001 ----------------------------------------------------------------- The International Federation of Classification Societies, founded in 1985, is composed of: Associaçáo Portuguesa de Classificaçào e Análise de Dados, British Classification Society, Central American and Carribean Society of Classification and Data Analysis, Classification Society of North America, Gesellschaft für Klassifikation, Irish Pattern Recognition and Classification Society, Japanese Classification Society, Korean Classification Society, Société Francophone de Classification, Società Italiana di Statistica, Vereniging voor Ordinatie en Classificatie and Section of Classification and Data Analysis of the Polish Statistical Society. The IFCS is a non-profit, non-political scientific organization, the aims of which are to further classification research. Among other activities, the IFCS organises a biennial conference, and supports the Journal of Classification. ----------------------------------------------------------------- FROM THE PRESIDENT As announced in the last IFCS Newsletter, our elections took place at the end of last year. It is my pleasure to congratulate the winners. First of all, Carlo Lauro is now acting as Vice-President and will serve as President for the next two years. As I know him for a long time, I can say that I am sure he will be the right man at the right place. Tae Rim Lee will join the Executive Committee as new Treasurer and David Banks was reelected as Secretary. I want to congratulate both of them. Ludovic Lebart and John Gower were elected as Additional Members of the Council. I am very happy to welcome them in the IFCS Council as a reelected and a newly elected member, respectively. In October 2000, Hans-Hermann Bock and I were invited at the annual SKAD meeting. The meeting was well-organized and pleasant. We took this opportunity to visit Krakow, the city where the IFCS conference of 2002 will be held. Andrzej Sokolowski, the Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee of IFCS-2002, welcomed us and we visited the superb city and the part of the university where the IFCS conference will take place. We are sure that the conference will be a success. We are grateful to Tae Rim Lee for organizing an IFCS session at the ISI meeting in Seoul this summer. We have contacted the organizers of the ISI 2003 in Berlin in order to plan an IFCS session also at that meeting. Regarding the Journal of Classification, I can inform you that following the decisions of the Council meeting in Namur, discussions have taken place inside the CSNA and between the CSNA and the IFCS. The conclusion is that the Journal of Classification will remain a CSNA journal, but see p. 2 of this newsletter for more information. Jean-Paul Rasson. ----------------------------------------------------------------- IFCS 2002 conference in Kraków (Cracow), Poland, July 16-19, 2002 More information on page 2-3 ----------------------------------------------------------------- IFCS ELECTIONS In December, the IFCS held elections to determine the Vice-President (who will serve as President when Jean-Paul Rasson steps down), the Treasurer, the Secretary, and two Additional Members. The candidates for Vice-President were Professors Carlo Lauro and Fionn Murtagh, and Carlo Lauro was the winner. The candidate for Treasurer was Tae Rim Lee, who ran unopposed and was unanimously elected. The candidates for Secretary were David Banks and Yves Lechevallier. David Banks was elected to a second term. The election for the two Additional Members was held after the election for IFCS officers, to ensure the broadest possible field of candidates. The nominees were Professors Wolfgang Gaul, John Gower, and Ludovic Lebart. As required in our By-Laws the vote was handled under the Hare system, in which members listed the candidates in their preferred order. Interestingly, the vote provided an example of the Condorcet paradox---given the interests of the member societies, this example may be useful in classroom illustrations. Under the Hare rules for determining the winners, John Gower and Ludovic Lebart were elected to the offices. All of these terms began on January 1, 2001 and all serve for four years. Carlo Lauro will spend the first year as Vice-President, the next two years as President, and the following year as Vice-President again, thereby ensuring continuity in the executive office. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Journal of classification The Classification Society of North America is delighted to announce that Willem Heiser of the Department of Psychology at the University of Leiden has agreed to assume editorship of the Journal of Classification in 2002. Willem brings outstanding research credentials to the job, as well as distinguished experience as the editor of Psychometrika. It will be a difficult task to continue the example of editorial excellence that has been maintained for so many years by Phipps Arabie, the current editor. But the CSNA Board is confident that no one is better qualified for the challenge than Willem, and that under his leadership the journal will continue to grow in stature and influence, and to gain new audiences around the world. The transition planning between the editors is already in process, and CSNA wants to assure the international research community that we expect this to go smoothly. Manuscripts should continue to be submitted to Phipps Arabie at the usual address, and we do not anticipate any sudden changes or discontinuities. As part of that effort to ensure stability during the transition, the CSNA Board has decided to postpone discussions on the possibility of eventually transferring control of the Journal of Classification to the IFCS, an opportunity that was raised during the IFCS Council meeting in Namur, Belgium. But the CSNA remains deeply committed to the role of international cooperation in scientific research, and strongly believes that active partnership with the IFCS and its member organizations is an essential role for our society. David Banks CSNA President ----------------------------------------------------------------- Information on IFCS-2002 The next IFCS-2002 Conference will take place in Cracow (Poland) on July 16-19, 2002. It is organized by the Section of Classification and Data Analysis (SKAD) of the Polish Statistical Association. Here is some information. Papers The researchers interested in classification, data analysis and related methods are encouraged to participate in the conference. Persons wishing to present a paper (oral presentation or poster) should send: - a title; - an abstract for a book of abstracts of no more than 200 words; - name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s); - keywords to the Chair of the Scientific Program Commitee, Krzysztof Jajuga, before February 15, 2002. Please send this information to the E-mail address: ifcs2002@credit.ae.wroc.pl The abstract should follow the guidelines as can be found at the conference Web-site. Proceedings A proceedings volume with a selection of papers will be published by Springer. The volume will be available at the conference. Authors wishing to submit their paper for publication in these proceedings should send a file containing the LaTeX source of the paper to the Chair of the Scientific Program Committee, Krzysztof Jajuga, before November 1, 2001 at the E-mail address: ifcs2002@credit.ae.wroc.pl The paper should not exceed six pages in length and should follow the guidelines as can be found at the conference Web-site. Publication in the proceedings volume is conditional on receiving the conference fee before February 15, 2002. Deadlines and time schedule: November 1, 2001 - Deadline for the submission of manuscript for the proceedings; December 31, 2001 - Notification of the acceptance of the manuscript; January 31, 2002 - Deadline for sending in the revised manuscript; February 15, 2002 - Deadline for the submission of abstract; February 15, 2002 - Deadline for paying the conference fee for the authors of papers to be published in the proceedings; March 31, 2002 - Notification of the acceptance of the abstract. Scientific Program The topics of the program belong to the area of classification, data analysis and related methods. Both theoretical and applied issues will be covered. The particular topics can be (but are not restricted to): Application of Classification and Data Analysis in - Social Sciences - Behavioral Sciences - Finance - Management - Marketing - Environmental Sciences - Ecology - Biology - Industry - Medicine - Genome Analysis - Archaeology - Image Analysis - Risk Analysis - Cognition - Quality Control - Others General Topics - Probabilistic Methods - Bayesian Data Analysis - Data Mining - Mixture Models - Internet Survey - Graphs - Validation - Computational Methods - Combinatorial Algorithms - Genetic Algorithms - Information Retrieval - Neural Networks - Others Classification - Decision Trees - Phylogenetic Methods - Pattern Recognition - Fuzzy Clustering - Hierarchical Methods - Discriminant Analysis - Optimization in Classification - Constrained Classification - Nonhierchical Methods - Others Data analysis - Textual Data Analysis - Multidimensional Scaling - Robust Data Analysis - Multivariate Data Analysis - Time series Analysis - Regression Trees - Categorical Data Analysis - Symbolic Data Analysis - Correspondence Analysis - Principal Components Analysis - Factor Analysis - Multiway Data Analysis - Spatial Data Analysis - Others Conference address Scientific Program Committee Krzysztof Jajuga Wroclaw University of Economics Ul. Komandorska 118/120 53-345 Wroclaw POLAND fax: (+48)-71-3680322 E-mail: ifcs2002@credit.ae.wroc.pl Local Organizing Committee Andrzej Sokolowski Cracow University of Economics Ul. Rakowicka 27 31-510 Kraków POLAND fax: (+48)-12-2935004 E-mail: ifcs2002@ae.krakow.pl World Wide Web http://ifcs2002.ae.krakow.pl --------------------------------------------------------------- CSNA's BIBLIOGRAPHIC SERVICE - AND HARTIGAN (1975) Now in its 29th year, the "Classification Literature Automated Search Service" is an important source of reference material. In the past, "CLASS" was published in book format, but was moved to diskette a number of years ago and recently to CD-ROM. It is now distributed with issue number 1 of the Journal of Classification each year. The current volume, Volume 29, relates to literature appearing in the year 2000. Bibliographic references are obtained in a particular way: A set of "golden oldies" on clustering and classification are sent to ISI (the Institute for Scientific Information) to find all citations to these papers and books in their SCI (Science Citation Index) and SSCI (Social Science Citation Index) holdings. This means that any entry in the CSNA bibliographical service must (i) be covered by ISI's databases, and (ii) cite one of our 80-odd profile references. Volume 29 contains over 3200 references. A CD contains plenty of space though, so the same CD contains cumulative data from Volumes 28, 27, 26, 25, 24 and 23. A graphical user interface facilitates searches for a given author, or a term used in the title, or even a term used in affiliations or journal titles. This year's CD also contains a scanned copy of John Hartigan's 1975 Wiley publication "Clustering Algorithms". This book had been out of print for some time. John holds the rights to the book, and, with his approval, the book can now be found on the CD. It is scanned by chapter, and is available in PDF format, for reading with an Adobe Acrobat reader (which is in the public domain of course, and widely available for different computer platforms). So ... 7 years of bibliographic data, plus a classic among books on clustering, are all available on this CD. The CD and Journal of Classification come with regular membership in CSNA. Membership applications are available on the Website, at: http://www.pitt.edu/~csna/ Fionn Murtagh, Editor, CSNA Bibliographic Service --------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS FROM THE MEMBER SOCIETIES NEWS FROM THE JCS (I) The Annual Research Meeting of the Japanese Classification Society The Annual Research Meeting of the Japanese Classification Society was held at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics on December 9, 2000. The program is summarized as the following: Invited talks In this meeting, the following special talks were presented as the invited session, "Computational Assisted Survey Information Collection and the Internet Environments." (1) Internet surveys and the current environments in Japan Noboru Ohsumi (The Institute of Statistical Mathematics) (2) Typical personality characteristics of the respondents in the experimental Web-based surveys Osamu Yoshimura (Okayama University) In this session, the current situation and surrounding problems in the Internet surveys in Japan (in particular, in the Web-based surveys) were discussed and the results of several experimental surveys were presented. Especially, it was suggested that it is important to compare the research results of the traditional survey methods (such as the face-to-face interviewing and mail surveys using the sampling procedures based on the conventional sampling frames such as the Residents’ List) and the Web-based surveys, respectively. By comparing these results, we can obtain objectively many findings of the similarities and differences among these survey methods used in our experiments. Contributed Papers As the contributed papers, the nine speakers presented their researches. The abstracts were shown as the following. (1) Classification of the Japanese based on HLA antigen Fumi Hayashi (Toyo Eiwa University) I have tried to classify the Japanese based on the data structure of HLA antigen. A new point of view was introduced to the method of classification. The propriety of the classification needs to be clarified through the clinical examination. When the clinical meaning is found on the classification, the meaning of HLA antigen will be understand on synthetic phenomena. New aspect was applied to the present classification. (2) Classification of ambulation and transfer abilities in stroke patients Kazuhiko Shimizu, Atsuhiko Matsunaga, Shinobu Shimizu, Hiroshi Nagasawa, Hideo Miyahara (Kitasato University) We investigated whether the difficulty of ambulation and transfer could be determined with each situation of test in stroke patients, whether the disability could be ranked according to severity and whether their ability measured by such methods would support general assessment. We measured ambulation and transfer ability in 187 stroke patients within 2 years after onset by our test items involving 32 situations and 3 conditions (with a handrail, with a cane and empty hand). Further the performance of these measured abilities was generally assessed on a scale of 1 to 6 after completion of all tests. When scoring the data obtained, considering that the difficulty in all situations was similar for 3 conditions, we ranked a case with possible ambulation empty hand as 3 point, with a cane as 2, with a handrail as 1 and with impossible even with a handrail as 0. As a result of a principal component analysis (PCA), we could determine the difficulty in 32 situations and rank ambulation and transfer abilities in all patients. In PCA, each situation was arrayed on the strip of reverse C letter type distribution on a two-dimensional plane and each patient was arrayed well on a dome-shaped distribution with the severe deficits in lower left and the slight deficits in lower right. In a discriminant analysis, for 84.3% of all patients the 1-6 rank of this ability performance could be discriminated on basis of each patient's principal component scores. (3) Consideration on the effect of medical fee revision Keiji Yajima (Science University of Tokyo) >From a cost database grounded on claim forms of the lung cancer patients through 1995 to 1998 it is shown that the price standard revision in 1997 for example brought 1.4% cost reduction with regard to the chemical treatment but 1.2% cost increase in respect of total medical treatment, although the official gazette summarized in 1997 that the revision will introduce 4.4% reduction of medicine cost and 1.27% reduction of total medical cost. (4) Cluster Analysis of 60 model cases used for determining degree of Yo-kaigo (Care Needs) Masuo Shirataka Atsuhiko Matsunaga Kazuhiko Shimizu, Hideo Miyahara (Kitasato University) In Japan, persons who submitted an application for public nursing care have to receive Kaigo-Ninntei (official recognition) from a ward office to get the services. To decide the degree of assistance or care needs, the members of the Nursing Care Certification Committee compare the applicant's state with those of model cases, and select the degree of the case who showed the most similar state to the applicant's. As a reference for determining the degree of care, the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Japan posted the model pattern of 60 cases. They consisted of 6 groups ranked by means of the degree of care and each group consisted of 10 cases, respectively to analyze the similarity between these cases we made the cases represented by 7 variables which were related to the care needs, defined the distance between cases and grouped them by using the cluster analysis. We found that the model cases which belonged to the high care groups such as 4 and 5 could not be separated by the distances, whereas the cases who belonged to the low care ones could be. This result is consistent with the impression felt by the persons who actually join to the Committee and treat real cases. (5) Three-dimensional classification of fifty social opinions Shuhei Mitsuchi (Science University of Tokyo) This report presents the result of an analysis of a questionnaire on the social consciousness of students, which had been planned by myself and was carried out in 1996 at Ehime University. The sample size amounted to 286. The main purpose of my investigation was to get a suggestive frame-work for interpreting the distribution of social opinions, observed in contemporary Japan, which seemed to have become more disordered compared with that in the Cold War Age, when most of the social opinions could have been classified as either "right" or "left". On the questionnaire were printed 50 representative opinions, each of which was connected to some social, political or ethical issue frequently discussed in contemporary Japan, and the examinees were requested to submit their replies by choosing, for each of those opinions, one of four scores expressing the degree of approval. Having processed the acquired data by means of factor analysis, I extracted 8 factors underlying those 50 opinions, namely "realism", "idealism", "human rights", "concern for living", "collectivism", "challenge", "prudentialism" and "legalism". The acquired factor loadings that amount to a set of 400 (=50×8) numerical values are by no means original data but the outcome of data processing. However, if we look at them from some figurative point of view, we can regard the 50 opinions as something like a set of examinees and 8 factors as something like the variables whose observation may reveal us the properties of each examinee. In that case the factor loadings appear something like original data. Thus, in the second stage of our analysis, by adopting this kind of figurative thinking, I dared to apply the method of principal component analysis on these "data" and, as a result of this, got three principal axes which enabled me to allocate those 50 opinions within a three-dimensional Euclidean space. The three axes are interpreted as, in turn, the axis of "interest-oriented or idea-oriented", the axis of "group-oriented or individualistic" and the axis of "stability-oriented or adventurous". (6) Application of hybrid modeling to POS data analysis Tokuhisa Suzuki (NIKKEI Research Inc.), Atsushi Ootaki (Meiji University) To mine data set for an optimal model taking into account both linear and non-linear parts of variation of response variable, a strategy of hybrid modeling for combining CART with linear regression analysis is proposed after the features are extracted from a POS scanner data set. To valid the strategy, the POS scanner data set is applied, and useful results are obtained as follows. 1) Hybrid modeling can improve accuracy of the sole modeling of CART and/or regression model. 2) It can handle any case with surrogate variable instead of any predictor, which has a missing value. 3) Autocorrelation of residual time series and its residual mean squared error after hybrid can be improved by application of autoregressive model. (7) Text data mining using abduction and MDL principle Takao Ishizuka (Asia University) Today, many data mining tools are developed and advertised as if we could discover hidden information or knowledge very easily using these wizardly tools. However, most output of data mining software are what we call common sense or nonsense association rules. Accordingly, the existing data mining tools may be called data screening or data visualization tools. That is, the evaluation of data mining methodology or model selection is hardly performed. We propose a new method to evaluate hypotheses created by text data mining. Creation of hypotheses is called abduction named by C. Peirce. Substituting other word or concept for a particular element composing original association rules can create many hypotheses candidates. Significant hypotheses should be selected by some criteria: the first is possibility criterion, the second is common sense exclusion criterion, and the third is knowledge usability criterion. Possibility of a hypothesis can be evaluated by the paired comparison between original rule and hypothesis concerned. Matching the existing knowledge base with hypothesis concerned enables us excluding trivial rules from many hypotheses candidates. We can utilize semantic network as knowledge representation method. Usability of knowledge is concerned with the registration of new knowledge into the existing knowledge base. Generally, simple hypothesis are available rather than complex hypotheses and the principle of parsimony will be applicable. We propose an application of Minimum Description Length principle proposed by Rissanen to the evaluation of usability of hypotheses. MDL philosophy will be applicable to automatic summarization of texts, the optimal concept map, the optimal item number in correspondence analysis, etc. Theoretical study on MDL in text data mining field is remained. The second generation of data mining is expected to incorporate model selection and evaluation. Principle of parsimony typical of MDL is a hopeful paradigm. (8) Statistical analyses of the relations between the stress-related emotional words and item responses Kiyoharu Doi (Miyazaki Sangyo-Keiei University), Noboru Ohsumi (The Institute of Statistical Mathematics) We have first provided an open-ended question to measure emotions such as the stress and closed-ended questionnaires to examine the fatigue awareness, aggression, and burnout. Next, by using these questions, the surveys were administered to 62 male students of a university in Japan to compare the relationship between their open-ended responses and their choices in closed types of questionnaire items. The meanings of the three closed-ended scales were low level; however, the behavior of the freely written responses showed various kinds of words concerning those emotions. The reason for presenting the difference between the two measurement methods was that the features of words given in the free answers were different from the tendencies in the closed items. In addition, it seems that most of those volunteered words may be relating with complex emotions. >From our research, we suggested the importance of using the free answers together with closed questions to objectively examine the emotional attitudes among the respondents. (9) Some characteristics of textual data collected on the WEB: An analysis of words associated with "beers" Osamu Yoshimura (Okayama University), Gen Tamura (Video Research Ltd.) Aiming at examining whether or not answers to open-ended questions in WEB surveys would have any distinctive characteristics from answers in traditional sample surveys, words associated with "beers" were analyzed. The result can be summarized as follows: In the WEB survey: - more questions were filled out - more words included in the answers - contents of the answers were more strongly affected by CF on TV, than that in the traditional sample survey. Based on the results, how to collect and use textual data on the WEB were discussed. (II) Reporting Result of Election for the Executive Members of JCS The new staff of the Japanese Classification Society were elected as the following list according to the articles of the JCS for electing the Executive Members. The tenure is for April 1,2001 - March 31, 2003. The Executive Members of the JCS: President Noboru Ohsumi The Institute of Statistical Mathematics 4-6-7, Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku Tokyo 106-8569, Japan Tel: +81-3-5421-8741 Fax: +81-3-5421-8796 ohsumi@ism.ac.jp Secretariat Members Secretary Fumi Hayashi Toyo Eiwa University 32 Miho-cho, Midori-ku Yokohama-shi 226-0015, Japan fumih@toyoeiwa.ac.jp Treasurer Tadashi Imaizumi Management & Information Sciences Tama University 4-1-1, Hijirigaoka, Tama-shi Tokyo 206-0022, Japan imaizumi@oak.timis.ac.jp Nobuo Shimizu The Institute of Statistical Mathematics 4-6-7, Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku Tokyo 106-8569, Japan nobuo@ism.ac.jp Public Relations Mariko Murata Statistical Information Institute for Consulting and Analysis Daiwa Bldg. 2F, 6-3-9 Minami-Aoyama, Minato-ku Tokyo 107-0062, Japan MarikoMURATA@sinfonica.or.jp Auditors Shoich Ueda 6-10-3, Maeno-cho, Itabashi-ku Tokyo 174-0063, Japan Ryozo Yoshino The Institute of Statistical Mathematics 4-6-7, Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku Tokyo 106-8569, Japan yoshino@ism.ac.jp The Executive Committee Members Yasumasa Baba, Kiyoharu Doi, Masashi Goto, Atsuhiro Hayashi, Chikio Hayashi, Fumi Hayashi, Syuichi Iwatsubo, Masahiro Mizuta, Masakatsu Murakami, Mariko Murata, Noboru Ohsumi, Akinori Okada, Meiko Sugiyama, Yutaka Tanaka, Setsuko Takakura, Tomoyuki Tarumi, Takahiro Tsuchiya, Keiji Yajima, Haruo Yanai, Ryozo Yoshino. (III) Report of the Joint Symposium among two societies: The Japanese Classification Society and the Behaviormetric Society of Japan The Japanese Classification Society and the Behaviormetric Society of Japan had the Joint Symposium entitled as the subject "Methodologies for collecting and analyzing the textual data in practical research surveys" on December 8, 2000 at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics. Fortunately, about 80 members attended the meeting and discussed. This meeting was first experimental trial among the two societies and was arranged regarding two parts as the following: The first part was conducted by a chairperson T, Maeda who is an organizer. The subject of "On acquisition and analysis of textual data in social surveys" was presented from two speakers, R. Yanagihara and O. Yoshimura. In addition, N. Ohsumi took some addresses as a commentator. The second part was assigned to present the theme "On acquisition and utilization of linguistic data and fuzzy data" and chaired by T. Imaizumi. Two speakers, K. Takahashi and A. Yoshikawa presented about this theme. T. Maeda gave some useful comments to these talks as commentator. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS FROM THE GfKl At the last GfKl annual conference (München, March 14-16, 2001) a new board has been elected for the period of 2001 - 2004. President: Prof. Dr. Otto Opitz, Lehrstuhl für Mathematische Methoden der Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Universität Augsburg, D-86135 Augsburg Tel.: +821/598-4150, Fax: +821/598-4226 e-mail: otto.opitz@wiso.uni-augsburg.de 1st Vice-president: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Gaul, Institut für Entscheidungs- theorie und Unternehmensforschung, Universität Karlsruhe, Postfach 69 80, D-76128 Karlsruhe Tel.: +721/608-3726, Fax: +721/608-7765 e-mail: wolfgang.gaul@wiwi.uni-karlsruhe.de 2nd Vice-president: Prof. Dr. Claus Weihs, Lehrstuhl für Computer-gestützte Statistik, Fachbereich Statistik, Universität Dortmund, Vogelpothsweg 78, D-44221 Dortmund Tel.: +231/755-4363, Fax: +231/755-4387 e-mail: weihs@statistik.uni-dortmund.de Treasurer: Prof. Dr. Hermann Locarek-Junge, Lehrstuhl für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, insbesondere Finanzwirt-schaft, Technische Universität Dresden, Mommsenstr. 13, D-01062 Dresden Tel.: +351/463-5572, Fax: +351/463-5404 e-mail: locarekj@wfin05.wiwi.tu-dresden.de Other members (in alphabetical order): Prof. Dr. Werner Esswein (Dresden), Prof. Dr. Hans Goebl (Salzburg), Prof. Dr. K.-D. Wernecke (Berlin) Further elections have been conducted in the Working Group "Data Analysis and Numerical Classification" (AG DANK) for the period of 2001 - 2004: Chairman: Prof. Dr. Günter Ritter, Fakultät für Mathematik und Informatik, Universität Passau, D-94030 Passau Tel.: +851/509-3110, Fax: +851 / 509-3002 email: ritter@stoch.fmi.uni-passau.de Vice-chairman: Dr. Christian Hennig, Zentrum für Modellierung und Simulation, Fachbereich Mathematik, Universität Hamburg, Bundesstr. 55, D-20146 Hamburg Tel.: +40/42838-4907, Fax: +40/42838-4924 e-mail: hennig@math.uni-hamburg.de The German Classification Society (GfKl) will hold its 26th Annual Conference at the University of Mannheim, July 22-24, 2002 under the title "Between Data Science an Everyday Web Practice". This meeting will take place immediately after the 8th IFCS-Conference at Krakow. Further information is available from the local organizer: Prof. Dr. Martin Schader, Lehrstuhl für Wirtschafts- informatik III, Universität Mannheim, Schloß, D-68131 Mannheim Tel.: +621/181-1640, Fax: +621/181-1643 e-mail: mscha@wifo.uni-mannheim.de ----------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS FROM THE IPRCS The Irish Pattern Recognition and Classification Society (IPRCS) organizes or supports various meetings and conferences. IPRCS is an affiliate member of IFCS in Ireland, and is also affiliated to the International Association for Pattern Recognition, IAPR. The IPRCS web area is at: http://www.iprcs.org IPRCS plays an active role each year in the annual conference on Machine Vision and Image Processing, IMVIP. In 2000, this was held at Queen's University Belfast. Details are accessible from the IPRCS web area, and includes streaming video of quite a few of the presentations. IMVIP 2001 will be at the National Univeristy of Ireland, Maynooth (just west of Dublin) on 5-7 September 2001. Details are at: http://www.cs.may.ie/imvip IMVIP 2001 is being held in parallel with the 12th annual Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, AICS 2001. IPRCS and the British Classification Society are supporters of a workshop on the "Application of Multiple-Valued Logic to Artificial Intelligence and to Data Mining", held at Queen's University Belfast on 27-28 April 2001. Further details of this workshop are at: http://www.qub.ac.uk/ivs/mvl It is financially supported by the EPSRC research council and the London Mathematical Society. The 21st Conference on Applied Statistics in Ireland, CASI, will take place from 16 to 18 May 2001. This event is being organized by Catherine Hurley, and details can be found at: http://www.maths.may.ie/isa/casi2001/welcome.htm IPRCS is organizing a session at the "Belfast 2001: European Congress on Medical Physics", to be held in Belfast on 12-15 September 2001. Details at: http://www.ipem.org.uk The Grid is coming - maybe it has been around for some time already - to permit access to computational resources just like the power grid. With large data repositories, from science, commerce, and other areas, to be mined for information and knowledge, future data analysis will require the software to travel to meet the data, and not the other way around as it has been traditionally. To look a little more at future perspectives, with a focus on astronomy, the "First Astro-Grid Workshop" took place at Queen's University Belfast, in Jan. 2001. Presentations are available online at: http://strule.cs.qub.ac.uk/~fmurtagh/astro-grid and (as we write) streaming video of all presentations is also being made available. Finally, here is a data analysis problem of an unusual sort. Making sense of telephone tariffs from mobile and fixed hone service providers is incredibly difficult. This is even more so the case in Europe, where one easily travels from one country to another, and so from one set of service providers to another. We have made a small start in making sense of such tariffs. Data is often semi-structured, often changing, and difficult to process in order to extract basic information "Which service provider gives the best deal, and which provider should I use, now, when roaming...?" An interactive calculator for mobile phone charges within and between the Republic of Ireland and UK - Northern Ireland, including roaming charges, can be found at: http://www.b4ucall.com When it went live on March 21, 2001, this website had over 43,000 hits on day one. A report on this work entitled "The Evolution of Telecom Technologies: Current Trends and Near-Future Implications" is available online at: http://www.qub.ac.uk/ccbs We are hoping to extend this work, and indeed to uncover some pretty interesting clustering and data mining type problems. IPRCS IFCS representatives: Catherine Hurley, churley@maths.may.ie Fionn Murtagh, f.murtagh@qub.ac.uk ----------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS FROM THE SFC 1. J.-P. Asselin de Beauville (AUPELF-UREF, Montréal, Canada) and Yves Lechevallier (INRIA, France) have been reelected as vice-presidents of the SFC. 2. The next SFC meeting (SFC'2001) will be held in Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe) from December 17 to 21, 2001 (information in this newsletter). 3. SFC 2002 meeting will take place in Toulouse (France) in September 2002. 4. The issue number 14 of the «SFC Bulletin» was published in January 2001. André HARDY, SFC Secretary ----------------------------------------------------------------- CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS CSNA ANNUAL MEETING The 2001 annual meeting will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, from Thursday, June 14, through Sunday, June 17, 2001, at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, located on the Washington University Medical Center Campus in St. Louis. William D. Shannon, Ph.D., Division of General Medical Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, is the Conference Chair. Two short courses are planned for Thursday, June 14th, with regular sessions beginning on the morning of Friday, June 15th. There will be a reception on Thursday evening, a conference banquet on Friday evening, and a business meeting on Saturday afternoon. The conference keynote address will be given by Luc Devroye, Ph.D. of McGill University. CSNA meetings are traditionally informal and very interdisciplinary. Abstracts of papers are distributed, but no formal proceedings are produced. Speakers are encouraged to discuss work in progress, of either applied or methodological nature. St. Louis' Lambert International Airport provides non-stop flights from most US cities and several locations in Canada and Europe. Questions about the conference should be directed to Bill Shannon at the Division of General Medical Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, Campus Box 8005, 660 S. Euclid Ave., St. Louis, MO, USA 63110-1093; Telephone: 314-454-8356; Fax: 314-454-5113. The Website is: http://ilya.wustl.edu/csna/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- 25th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE GERMAN CLASSIFICATION SOCIETY (GfKl) >From March, 14th to 16th, the 25th Annual Conference of the German Classification Society had been taking place at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich. More than 240 registered attendees, among them 60 coming from foreign countries (Poland, Austria, France, United Kingdom, Japan, United States, Australia, Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Brazil, and Canada), were listening to 146 lectures and tutorials. Due to generous donations of several companies the program committee had succeeded in gaining about 30 invited speakers, most of them internationally renowned, to present research work on special topics around "Exploratory Data Analysis in Empirical Research". Session talks particularly were given on data mining in very large data bases, web mining, data analysis and classification, biometrics, medicine, linguistics, and archaeology. Aside this, the social program has been most agreeable. A reception by the city was given in the wonderful location of the "Old Townhall" in the centre of Munich - The conference diner took place at "Augustiner", a traditional Bavarian restaurant offering delicious local food and most famous Bavarian beer. - The sightseeing program covered several guided city tours, a visit of Bavaria film studios and a one day trip to the King’s castles of Neuschwanstein and Linderhof. Additional information on the conference including several photo pages are accessible via: www.efoplan.de The local organizer would like to thank the board and the program committee for acquiring all the speakers providing an interesting and interdisciplinary scientific program as well as his organizational team for providing pleasurable general conditions. We hope the attendees will keep the Munich conference 2001 in best remembrance. ----------------------------------------------------------------- PROTEOMICS, GENOMICS AND BIOINFORMATICS WORKSHOP Bernried, Germany 5-6.10.2001 The special interest group "Classification and data analysis in biology and medicine" (AG-BT) of the GfKl organizes a joint workshop on "Proteomics, Genomics and Bioinformatics" together with the group "Functional genomics" of the Vereinigung für allgemeine und angewandte Mikrobiologie (VAAM) (Society of general and applied microbiology). For further information see: http://www.gfkl.de/veranst.html or contact: Berthold.Lausen@rzmail.uni-erlangen.de Since 1990 the AG-BT concentrates on research strategies and methods, which were crucial in biological taxonomy and are important tools and concepts in recent bioinformatics. The analysis of DNA micro array data is a striking example that classification and data mining methods and strategies are essential for various post genome project challenges. Recent examples for the activity of the AG-BT are the successful and lively sessions on the annual meetings of the GfKl: Focus on Genome sequencing projects in Bielefeld 1999, on phylogenetic inference, statistical genomics and coalescent theory in Passau 2000 and bioinformatics and genome analysis in Munich 2001. Berthold Lausen ----------------------------------------------------------------- EMPG 2001 32nd European Mathematical Psychology Group Meeting September 25- 29, 2001 Lisboa, Portugal First Announcement and Call for Papers The 32nd European Mathematical Psychology Group Meeting will be held at the Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação, Universidade de Lisboa (FPCE-UL), Lisbon, Portugal, and is organized jointly by the Laboratório de Estatística e Análise de Dados (LEAD/FPCE-UL) and the Associação Portuguesa de Classificação e Análise de Dados (CLAD). OBJECTIVE OF THE MEETING Mathematical Psychology concerns the development of quantitative models and theories, and testing them against empirical data. Mathematical Psychology draws upon mathematical and statistical methods, computer simulation, and formal logic to develop theories e.g. perception and sensation, psychophysics, memory and learning, decision making, problem solving and thinking, motor behavior, emotion and motivation, and social behavior. The first EMPG meeting was held in Paris in 1971. The preceding EMPG meetings were organized in Padova (1996), Nijmgen (1997), Keele (1998), Mannheim (1999) and in Graz (2000). Following the success of these meetings, it was decided in Graz to organize the 32nd European Mathematical Psychology Group Meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. In the EMPG-2001 all topics of Mathematical Psychology are welcome. Particular attention will be paid to the following: - Response Time Models for Elementary Cognitive Processes; - Models of Preference and Choice Behavior; - Foundations of the Theory of Measurement; - Testing and Comparison of Quantitative Models; - Neural Network Models; - Teaching and Training Mathematical Psychology in an Interdisciplinary and International Context; - as well as interdisciplinary related areas. The Meeting includes four types of presentations: - Invited papers on the main topics of the Meeting, selected by the Scientific Committee. - Papers composing specialized sessions / symposium. - Contributed papers proposed by authors. - Posters. Software exhibitions are also planned. An Introductory Course on "Mathematical Psychology and Data Analysis" will be held on September 25th. We invite presentations on Mathematical Psychology and all related areas. GENERAL INFORMATION Location: Laboratório de Estatística e Análise de Dados (LEAD) Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade de Lisboa (FPCE-UL) Alameda da Universidade 1649-013 Lisboa, Portugal E-mail: empg2001@fpce.ul.pt Fax: +351 21 793 34 08 - Tel: +351 21 793 45 54 Web page: http://correio.cc.fc.ul.pt/~cladlead/EMPG01.html Chair: Prof. Dr. Helena Bacelar-Nicolau LEAD / FPCE-UL e-mail: hbacelar@fc.ul.pt Deadlines: Submission of abstracts: June 15, 2001 Early Registration: June 15, 2001 Notification of acceptance: June 30, 2001 Registration Fees (in PTE; 1 Eur = 200,482 PTE) Before University and Students Other 15 June CLAD members Participants Meeting 35.000 20.000 45.000 Course 15.000 15.000 20.000 Meeting+ 40.000 30.000 55.000 Course After University and Students Other 15 June CLAD members Participants Meeting 45.000 25.000 60.000 Course 17.500 17.500 25.000 Meeting+ 50.000 35.000 70.000 Course Registration Fee Includes welcome reception, attendance at the meeting, documentation, coffee breaks and lunches. COMMITEES Scientific Committee Adelina Lopes da Silva (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal); Carmen Santisteban (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain); Christof Micko (Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany); Christoph Klauer (Universitaet Bonn, Germany); Danilo Rodrigues Silva (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal); Dietrich Albert (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria); Eric Maris (Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands); Francesca Cristante (Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy); Hans Colonius (Universität Oldenburg, Germany); Helena Bacelar-Nicolau (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal); Jean-Claude Falmagne (University of California, USA); Jean-Pierre Barthelemy (Université de Brest, France); José Ferreira Marques (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal); José Frederico Marques (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal); Leonel Garcia Marques (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal); Luc Delbeke (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium); Orlando Lourenço (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal); Wang Zhong-Ming (Zhejiang University, China) Organizing Committee Helena Bacelar-Nicolau (LEAD/FPCE, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa); Eugénia Duarte Silva (FPCE, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa); Ana Sousa Ferreira (LEAD/FPCE, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa); Otília Dias (LEAD/FPCE and ESTBarreiro, Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, Barreiro). ----------------------------------------------------------------- SFC MEETING Pointe-à-Pitre (GUADELOUPE) December 12-21, 2001 Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, Faculté des Sciences Exactes et Naturelles, Departement de Mathématiques et Informatique Campus de Fouillole Standard: 93-86-00 / Secrétariat Maths-Info: 93-86-93 / Fax: UFR Sc. 93-86-43 et 93-86-64 Pointe-à-Pitre (GUADELOUPE) The 8th Conference of the SFC (Société Francophone de Classification) will be organised in Guadeloupe, at the University of French West Indies and Guyana, on December 17-21, 2001. The "Simon Régnier" prize will be awarded to a young researcher. Important dates: May 31, 2001: deadline for the Simon REGNIER prize; June 30, 2001: deadline for submission of contributed papers; September 1, 2001: notification of the acceptance of contributed papers; September 16, 2001: deadline for early registration; October 1, 2001: final version for the accepted papers The non-francophone participants can present an abstract and a talk in english. See: ftp://sfc2001.univ-ag.fr/pub/conf/styles Informations about accomodation can be found on the web. Contact: sfc2001@univ-ag.fr More information: http://sfc2001.univ-ag.fr ----------------------------------------------------------------- IFCS NEWSLETTERS ON INTERNET: http://edfu.lis.uiuc.edu/~class/ifcs/newsletter.html The newsletters are available as PDF files, to be read with AcrobatReader. Click on Acrobat Reader to download. IFCS HOMEPAGE: http://edfu.lis.uiuc.edu/~class/ifcs/ Designed and maintained by David Dubin. The website contains among others: the IFCS Constitution and By-Laws, the IFCS newsletters, and pointers to the websites of the member societies. The website will be offline for a short while. ----------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS FOR THE COMING ISSUE OF THE IFCS CAN BE SENT TO: Paul.Deboeck@psy.kuleuven.ac.be Text files are by preference in ascii, wordperfect, or word, with pc format (mac is difficult, although not impossible). For graphical materials, by preference BMP, GIF, or PCX are used. Editor: Paul De Boeck, Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Tiensestraat 102, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. tel: +32 16 325980 fax: +32 16 215916