Advances in Multivariate Data Analysis

This volume contains a selection of papers presented during the biennial meeting of the CLAssification and Data Analysis Group (CLADAG) of the Societa Italiana di Statistica which was orga­ nized by the Istituto di Statistica of the Universita degli Studi di Palermo and held in the Palazzo Steri in Palermo on July 5-6, 2001. For this conference, and after checking the submitted 4­ page abstracts, 54 papers were admitted for presentation. They covered a large range of topics from multivariate data analysis, with special emphasis on classification and clustering, computa­ tional statistics, time series analysis, and applications in various classical or recent domains. A two-fold careful reviewing process led to the selection of 22 papers which are presented in this vol­ ume. They convey either a new idea or methodology, present a new algorithm, or concern an interesting application. We have clustered these papers into five groups as follows: 1. Classification Methods with Applications 2. Time Series Analysis and Related Methods 3. Computer Intensive Techniques and Algorithms 4. Classification and Data Analysis in Economics 5. Multivariate Analysis in Applied Sciences. In each section the papers are arranged in alphabetical order. The editors - two of them the organizers of the CLADAG confer­ ence - would like to express their gratitude to the authors whose enthusiastic participation made the meeting possible and very successful.