H. Bacelar-Nicolau (Portugal), V. Batagelj (Slovenia), L. Billard (USA), H-H. Bock (Germany), C. Bravo (Spain), P. Brito (Portugal), F.A.T. De Carvalho (Brazil), E. Diday (France), M. Chavent (France), F. Esposito (Italy), M. Gettler-Summa (France), K.S. Gowda (India), A.Hardy (Belgium), M. Ichino (Japan), S. Laaksonen (FI), C. Lauro (Italy), Y. Lechevallier (France), D. Malerba (Italy), C. Marcelo (Portugal), M.Noirhomme (Belgium), F. Palumbo (Italy), H. Papageorgiou (Greece), J.P. Rasson (Belgium), O. Rodriguez (Costa-Rica), R. Verde (Italy), S. Winsberg (USA).

Rosanna Verde
Second University of Naples, Italy - (chair)
Paula Brito
University of Porto, Portugal
Francisco de A.T. de Carvalho
Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil
Andrzej Sokolowski
University of Cracow, Poland - (local organizer)

Symbolic Data Analysis (SDA) is a new domain in the knowledge discovery and management area, related to multivariate analysis, pattern recognition, data bases, artificial intelligence. As input the aim of SDA is to allow a more realistic description of the units by taking care of their internal variation and their complex structure. As output the aim of SDA is to provide a better explanation of the results by an automatic interpretation closer to the user natural language. SDA provides, suitable tools to work with complex, aggregated, relational and higher-level data described by multi-valued variables where the entries of a data table are sets of categories or of numbers, intervals or probability distributions, related by rules and taxonomies.

The methodological issues under development generalise the classical exploratory data analysis techniques, like: visualisation, factorial techniques, decision tree, discrimination, regression, neuronal methods, multidimensional scaling, classification and clustering methods, conceptual lattices.

The aim of this workshop is to present new theoretical results and applications in this framework.

Researchers interested in SDA are invited to submit an abstract (max 2 pages - following the guidelines that can be found at the IFCS2002 web site: http://ifcs2002.ae.krakow.pl) by e-mail to rosanna.verde@unina2.it in PDF format (please send it as .ZIP file).

Deadlines and Time schedule:
- March 1st, 2002 - Deadline submission abstract
- March 31th, 2002 - Notification of the acceptance of the abstract