Advances in Multivariate Data Analysis: Proceedings of the Meeting of the Classification and Data Analysis Group (CLADAG) of the Italian Statistical Society, University of Palermo, July 5–

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.

Table of Contents:
Classification Methods with Applications.- The STP Procedure as Overfitting Avoidance Tool in Classification Trees.- A Modal Symbolic Pattern Classifier.- Proximity Measures Between Classification Trees.- Ordinal Classification Trees Based on Impurity Measures.- Time Series Analysis and Related Methods.- Space Time Noisy Observation Smoothing.- Spectral Analysis in Frequency and Time Domain for Noisy Time Series.- A Resistant Measure of Heteroskedasticity in Explorative Time Series Analysis.- Computer Intensive Techniques and Algorithms.- Smoothing Score Algorithm for Generalized Additive Models.- Bootstrap Variables Selection in Neural Network Regression Models.- Robust Centre Location in Radial Basis Function Networks.- The Genetic Algorithm Estimates for the Parameters of Order p Normal Distributions.- Classification and Data Analysis in Economics.- Non-linear Dynamics in the Industrial Production Index.- Tensorial Co-Structure Analysis for the Full Multi Modules Customer Satisfaction Evaluation.- A Proposal of Classification of Wholesale Trade Enterprises on the Base of Structural and Performance Indicators.- The Analysis of Poverty in Italy: A Fuzzy Dynamic Approach.- Multivariate Analysis in Applied Sciences.- Combining Information from Several Experts: Selecting and Stopping Rules in Sequential Consulting.- A Spatial Clustering Hierarchical Model for Disease Mapping.- Second-order Interaction in a Trivariate Generalized Gamma Distribution.- Mortality and Air Pollution in Philadelphia: A Dynamic Generalized Linear Modelling Approach.- The Multivariate Adaptive Sampling for Estimating the Diversity in Biological Populations.- Adjusted Least Square Estimation for Noisy Images.- Flexible Dynamic Regression Models for Real-time Forecasting of Air Pollutant Concentration.