Advances in intelligent data analysis VII

Weareproudtopresenttheproceedingsoftheseventhbiennialconferenceinthe Intelligent Data Analysis series. The conference took place in Ljubljana, Slo- nia, September 6-8, 2007. IDA continues to expand its scope, quality and size. It started as a small side-symposium as part of a larger conference in 1995 in Baden-Baden(Germany). It quickly attractedmoreinterest in both submissions and attendance as it moved to London (1997) and then Amsterdam (1999). The next three meetings were held in Lisbon (2001), Berlin (2003) and then Madrid in 2005. The improving quality of the submissions has enabled the organizers to assemble programs of ever-increasing consistency and quality. This year we madea rigorousselectionof33papersoutofalmost100submissions. Theresu- ing oral presentations were then scheduled in a single-track, two-and-a-half-day conference program, summarized in the book that you have before you. In accordance with the stated IDA goal of “bringing together researchers from diverse disciplines,” we believe we have achieved an excellent balance of presentationsfromthemoretheoretical–bothstatisticalandmachinelearning– to the more application-oriented areas that illustrate how these techniques can beusedinpractice. Forexample, theproceedingsincludepaperswiththeoretical contributions dealing with statistical approaches to sequence alignment as well as papers addressing practical problems in the areas of text classi? cation and medical data analysis. It is reassuring to see that IDA continues to bring such diverse areas together, thus helping to cross-fertilize these ? elds.